


Put Our Shoes On

by ancientroots



Series: Put Our Shoes On [1]
Category: 2PM (Band), GOT7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-07-28 10:45:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7637113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientroots/pseuds/ancientroots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When GOT7's Jaebum is caught kissing a man, it sets into motion things much bigger than the rusted gears of his relationship with Jinyoung.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A reader mentioned that he/she was confused by the Jay Park/Ok Taecyeon pairing in this fic, so seeing as most readers seem to come from the GOT7 fandom, this is a brief explanation. 
> 
> In 2009, Jay Park from 2PM had to leave Korea because of an Internet scandal. Someone hacked into his personal account, and leaked messages he'd written as a trainee, complaining about Korea. He suffered intense backlash. Although he was not expelled from the group immediately, and 2PM and Park Jinyoung expressed support for him at the time, his contract was terminated in 2010, allegedly due to something else he had done, which the company refused to explain. You can read more about it on his Wikipedia page and the 2PM Wikipedia page. I'll post this again on Chapter 4 for old readers. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, guys!

“Life is like the wind. What is there to agonise over? Meetings are happy, partings are sad, and everything is just a moment.”

– Kim Ji Hoo, aged twenty-three, in October 2008.

**  
**

**Chapter One**

The news broke at three on a Sunday morning. So, naturally, Mark saw it first. _Saw_ , being one of those relative terms, the way cars were related to lorries, monster trucks, and bulldozers. He was surfing his Twitter for like the tenth time before the quiet of his brand new, single room lured him to sleep. Not that Mark had a problem living on his own. God knew there wasn’t Jackson’s socks to fight for headspace with, or cardboard boxes to stuff his clothes into, or BamBam and Yugyeom having cat fights just a thin wall over. Mark was a quiet person. Anyone could tell you that. There was just a difference, you know, in being quiet and –

 

Twitter exploded.

 

Mark watched his feed descend into madness for ten, silent seconds. And then he reached for his phone. Jinyoung would have heard the ring the first time, the bastard, but it wasn’t like he was going to actually get up and answer it for a whole ‘nother minute, was he.

 

“Hyung?” Hoarse, and bitter with sleep. “Do you know what time it is?”

 

Mark was a calm person. But this time, the evenness of his own voice surprised him. Probably because his heart was in his ears. “Yes, Jinyoungie. I know.”

 

Jinyoung listened quietly. And then he said, “I’ll see you at the house.”

 

“I don’t know if we should – ”

 

“We have to leave now, hyung. Or we won’t be able to.”

 

The beep was long. And shrill. Mark looked at his phone screen, gleaming in the dark. Just as he was about to drop it onto the bed, it beeped a second time. He thumbed the text open.

 

_Have you SEEN this?_

He chucked it into the sheets. Of course, the bastard would have nothing useful to say.

 

Jinyoung was right, the way Jinyoung tended to be right about annoying things. The roads were still empty, the way they were supposed to be at this time of night. Yellow lamplight striped the dashboard, and Mark’s fingers on the steering wheel. He turned up the radio, drummed out the rhythm of Luhan’s title song. Pretended the silence didn’t bother him.

 

He thought about how loud everyone was going to be, and how they were going to get on him to say something, to contribute, because wasn’t he the oldest, and Jinyoung’s claws would come out then, and Jaebum’s pacing, and Jackson’s deadweight silence, and abruptly, he didn’t have to pretend anymore.

 

By the time the great iron doors opened, his headlights swinging an arc over brick tiles and unmown grass as he urged the car up the slope, he was gritting his teeth.

 

The front door was cracked open. Jinyoung. Careless bastard. Mark banged it behind him, then, squinting into the gloom of the ground floor, realised that no one was awake yet. There was a single light at the end of the marble expanse. The sound of water clinking into a glass. Mark looked down. His slippers had been laid out for him.

 

Jinyoung looked like he’d slept in his clothes. Not because he was actually wearing clothes he’d slept in, because if there was one thing Jinyoung hated, it was untidiness. Just. Mark could read it in his eyes. One of those things he’d picked up, and then forgotten he knew about till it was looking him in the face.

 

A glass of soju, pushed across a black countertop.

 

“I couldn’t,” Jinyoung said.

 

The glass was cold to the touch. Mark’s irritation seeped into it, faded, left him hollow. He sighed. “Do you want me to?”

 

GOT7’s unofficial deputy leader frowned down into his own glass. “No. Thanks, but.”

 

“But what?”

 

This time, it wasn’t Mark sighing. “Because, hyung. You don’t think it’s a problem.”

 

His words were harsher than they needed to be. Instinctive. Defensive. “And you do?”

 

Jinyoung’s eyes were the blackest he’d ever seen. The first time he’d looked into them, back on that first day in Korea, something like nine years ago, they’d unnerved him. They did now too, but for different reasons.

 

In his pocket, his phone vibrated. He put his hand over it. Like that would shut it up.

 

“You know I don’t,” said Jinyoung. “But it is. It’s a problem. They need to know we understand that.”

 

They divided and conquered. Mark took Jackson and Jaebum. Jinyoung took Bambam, Yugyeom, and Youngjae. Mark banged on doors. Jinyoung opened them without knocking them. Early mornings and lack of sleep had inured them to politeness a long time ago.

 

Jackson woke when Mark smothered him with his pillow. When they re-emerged, Bambam and Yugyeom were already milling uselessly in the upstairs living room. Mark let Jackson take Jaebum’s room. He sat down on the sofa, drummed his fingers on the arm. That way, he couldn’t curl them into a fist at the sound of Jaebum’s voice.

 

Youngjae woke slowly, more comfortably than if it’d been Mark doing the waking. He was still half-asleep when he took his seat on the edge of Bambam’s couch. Jinyoung crouched on the floor before them. Only Jackson, flicking his eyes towards Mark, seemed to think this was weird.

 

Mark shoved him over. There was more than enough space on the sofa, if Jinyoung was going to do this the grown-up way.

 

The way the amber, fluorescent light gleamed on the wooden flooring struck him with a sudden nostalgia. A sickness of heart. The floors at his old home, before his parents moved, had been panelled in wood too. Except that no one walked on them with bunny slippers that squeaked.

 

It was the distraction that made Jinyoung’s announcement so jarring. It shouldn’t have been. Hadn’t Mark been the first to know?

 

“Jaebum-hyung’s been photographed kissing a guy.”

 

The residential parts of Cheongdam were pretty quiet. Mark could hear Jackson scuff his foot as if it’d been amplified through a loudspeaker. And Bambam cough. “Hyung, that isn’t funny.”

 

“Fuck,” Yugyeom whined. “Hyung, what the fuck?”

 

Youngjae shifted. Jinyoung failed to correct Yugyeom’s language. The discomfort edged towards panic. “Jinyoung-hyung – ”

 

Jaebum’s hand was clenched on his knee. His knuckles were white.

 

“Why would Jaebum kiss a guy?” Jackson asked. “He’s not gay. If he was gay, he would have fucking kissed _you_ like a billion years – ”

 

Mark stuffed his fist into Jackson’s mouth. It was too late. Jinyoung’s face, already pale from the careful application of a dozen different facial products since youth, had gone white. His lips were pressed tight. And Bambam latched finally onto the _point_.

 

“Yeah,” he said. “Jaebum-hyung’s not gay. So why – hyung, did the guy come onto you or something, _ew_ – ”

 

Jinyoung opened his mouth.

 

“No.”

 

It was the first thing Jaebum’d said. Mumbled, more like. Easy and worthless, same as all the things he tacked onto the beginning or the end of every promotional interview they’d done since they debuted.

 

“No,” he said. “I kissed him. I’m gay. He’s my boyfriend.”

 

Mark didn’t look at Jinyoung. He fixed his eyes on Jaebum, so that he wouldn’t forget that this was hands down the most difficult thing Jaebum’d ever done, might ever do. That he must have thought about so long and so hard, to be able to say it. That he was friends with the both of them.

 

Or he might have punched him.

 

Bambam was laughing. Shocked and breathy, like he’d done the elephant-nose spin a few too many times. Maybe that was how Bambam felt. Maybe he thought this was a hidden camera. Yugyeom kept looking around, turning his head this way and that, looking for a staff and a couple dozen lenses that weren’t there.

 

Youngjae said, “At the concert.” And hid his face in his hands.

 

“Okay.” Jackson. Running his fingers through his hair. Over and over again. “Okay. So why the fuck did you get caught?”

 

“No.” Bambam put his hands up. “No, stop right there. We aren’t going there. We aren’t just going to – Jaebum-hyung isn’t gay. He isn’t _gay_. He isn’t a pansy, he – ”

 

“He came to the concert,” Jaebum said. “Backstage. We were talking, and.”

 

“Bambam.” Jinyoung’s voice was like iron. “Sit down.”

 

“I can’t. I can’t. You have to be fucking with us.”

 

“Jaebum,” Jackson said. “You idiot.”

 

Youngjae was sobbing. “We are going to die. We are going to die.”

 

“We change in front of you,” Yugyeom shouted. “We walk around naked. We have to kiss you on TV.”

 

Mark said, “It’s not like he wanted to kiss you, baby face.”

 

Quiet. A moment’s quiet, when a breeze knocked against the row of sliding doors to the balcony. Coco scratched against the glass. And then. Chaos.

 

Jackson’s bulk kept Yugyeom off him, Youngjae’s sobbing was steadily increasing in volume and octave, Bambam screamed Thai obscenities he’d taught Mark the very first time they met, Jaebum sat like a stone, and Jinyoung tried to grab Yugyeom from the back, and ended up with an elbow in his nose.

 

“Blood,” Bambam squeaked. “Oh, there’s blood.”

 

Jaebum stood up. But Jinyoung stuck his hand out. “No.” His voice was muffled. He tipped his head back, eyes squeezed shut.

 

Jackson shoved Yugyeom. “Idiot!”

 

They were all idiots, in Mark’s opinion. But he kept his mouth shut this time, and pointed at the tissues. “Yah, somebody _move_.”

 

“Hyung,” Yugyeom said, uncomfortable. “I’m sorry.”

 

“What if it’s broken?”

 

Youngjae’s panic was contagious. Mark kicked Jackson out of the way – he’d probably plied Jinyoung with all the tissues in the box, anyhow – and peered at Jinyoung’s nose. “Doesn’t look broken.”

 

“How are you supposed to know, hyung, you aren’t a doctor – ”

 

“Shut up,” Jaebum said. “For fuck’s sake, all of you – ”

 

Jinyoung said, “Shut up.” He sounded like he had a cold, but there was no mistaking the coldness of his voice. The hollowness. “Shut up, _michinnom_.”

 

If it helped nothing else, especially the atmosphere, at least the maknae stopped talking. Except for Youngjae, who whimpered, “What are we going to do?”

 

No one knew.

 

An hour later, after their manager had called – well, called Jaebum, nobody was going to pick that up – and told them he was coming over, JYP was coming over, Mark followed Jinyoung onto the balcony.

 

They’d filmed here, when everybody except Jinyoung packed up and moved into their own rooms in a villa in Cheongdam-dong, maybe five blocks away from where their 2PM seniors used to live. Nora and Coco got into a rare fight that might have involved some blood, and that, of course, didn’t make it onto camera. Just Jinyoung and Jaebum, lying on these sunchairs, having one of those obnoxious conversations you could only have when you were trying your best to fill in the silences on the film reel.

 

He wondered if Jinyoung remembered that.

 

Or if the crumpled tissue in his hand was more interesting.

 

“So your nose isn’t broken?”

 

“Don’t ask me about my nose.”

 

The light from the living room sliced their faces into a half-darkness that did nothing to hide the softness of Jinyoung’s mouth. “I’m sorry.”

 

Mark sat down next to him. The sunchair felt flimsy beneath him. White plastic strips lashed onto a frame. He used to lie in a chair like this all day, every day for three months of proper Los Angeles summer, listening to Eminem and the lap of water at the edge of an empty pool.

 

Jinyoung’s shoulders were stiff under his arm. His hair, when Mark pressed his head against his own, tickled. “Cry if you want.”

 

They breathed together. Jinyoung’s breathing growing more and more unsteady, until at last, he buried his face in the crook of Mark’s neck, and let his tears soak the sleeve of a shirt that no one but Mark, and maybe its actual, forgetful owner, knew wasn’t his.

 

In his pocket, his phone vibrated. It was easy to ignore it. He patted a lullaby into Jinyoung’s shoulder, to the rhythm of Luhan’s latest title song.

 

“It’s not,” Jinyoung whispered. “We weren’t even – ”

 

“It’s okay.”

 

“I shouldn’t – ”

 

“There’s nothing _should_ about it, Jinyoungie.”

 

They were sitting on the far sunchair. In the light, but out of sight for anyone who might happen to look out. Still, Mark didn’t have to look around to know that Jaebum was watching them. It was just one of those things. One of those reasons why he’d moved out. Even though Bambam and Yugyeom were upset with him, and Jackson and Youngjae were cautiously curious, and Jaebum resentful. Less at Mark, than at the echo in his decision of Jinyoung’s past sin.

 

It hadn’t used to annoy him: how well he knew this group of people; how well they knew him.

 

“I’m sorry,” Jinyoung said.

 

And Mark knew without having to ask, what he was sorry for.

 

It hadn’t used to suffocate him.

 

Dawn dripped into being around them. The crispness of the air. The collection of light in the sky like water in a leaf. The winding of sound from the street, up the driveway, and into the house itself. It happened so gradually that Mark didn’t really understand that the low roar he was hearing wasn’t the distant highway.

 

Jinyoung wiped his eyes, and tried to dry Mark’s sleeve with what was left of the tissues, and downstairs, a door slammed, and JYP bellowed up the stairs, and it was his voice, the anger in it, that made Mark realise.

 

That thing he was hearing. Like the rumble of the earth.

 

It was the beginnings of a protest.


	2. Chapter 2

Jay was thirty-four years old. Too old to wake up spread-eagled on his sofa, notebook open on his chest, and drool drying on his jaw. Definitely too old to have the morning paper chucked at his face like a frisbee.

 

“Can’t you sleep like a normal person?” Taecyeon mumbled in English around his toothbrush. Turning his head to spit into the sink.

 

Jay had a big-as-fuck apartment, he’d tell you. There was a good fifty feet between his giant living room and his giant, marble-topped kitchen. But his tall-as-fuck boyfriend made everything seem way too small.

 

He dropped the newspaper on the floor. The Korean lyrics slipped like water from his mind, substituted with English, too. “I am a normal person.” He pulled the collar of his drooled-on shirt away from him, made a face, and then ripped it off entirely. “With brilliant ideas that come in the middle of the night.”

 

Taecyeon snorted. Cupboard doors banged. Neither of them were big on food, or nutrition in general, but keeping the kitchen stocked was a task two people sucked at less than one. Even if, you know, only one person actually lived here.

 

“Yeah,” said Taecyeon, voice muffled by the sound of a crisp packet tearing open, or maybe just by his own sulky resentment. “Or people’d think you just don’t like sleeping with me.”

 

“If I didn’t like sleeping with you,” he said. “I’d kick you out. Who do you think I am? Hey, where’s my fucking phone?”

 

If Taecyeon replied, he didn’t hear it. The shower spit burning water at him. Fuck beanpoles and their inability to remember to turn the heat faucet back to where it belonged. _Zero_. When Jay came back out, still buttoning his shirt, he found his phone sitting on the coffee table.

 

His phone and its corraller sitting on the coffee table, both black-faced and unreadable.

 

“What?”

 

Taecyeon slid off, buried his face in Jay’s super-expensive carpet. “I’m staying.”

 

“You can’t stay,” he said, scooping up his phone. “You shoulda fucking left at five in the morning, you idiot sleepyhead.”

 

And then the screen lit up and he read the first thing on his Facebook feed.

 

When he laughed, Taecyeon looked up. His mouth was tight. Angry. “What’s so funny?”

 

“Yah,” Jay said. “How is it not funny? Look at this headliner: ‘GOT7’S JB HAS AIDS? ALL THE MEMBERS MIGHT BE AFFECTED!’ Wow, it’s 2020, guys. Get with the fucking times.”

 

“It doesn’t matter if it’s true. If they believe it – ”

 

“If? They do believe it.” He chucked the phone onto the coffee table. It slid off the glass surface, bounced on Taecyeon’s rock hard thigh. Jay considered fucking him with his jeans still on, pushed down just enough to get at his hole and his cock. The dude was too old to look this good in skinny jeans. He thought about this, and said, voice detached from him like he was speaking through a microscope, “Why? Y’think they should drop him? This JB kid.”

 

“Of course – ” Taecyeon paused. Then raised himself onto his elbows. If he’d been angry before, he was stiff with it now. “You’re testing me, aren’t you?”

 

Jay didn’t look away.

 

In the first few months, Taecyeon would have dropped it. Their relationship as new and fragile as the splint on the third and fourth fingers of his left hand had looked, when he turned up on Jay’s doorstep, maybe a week after the newspapers announced that 2PM’s main rapper was being discharged from service.

 

He never said it, would never say it, but Jay blamed that splint sometimes. For making his stupid mountain of an ex-groupmate, and ex-friend, look weaker than he was. Vulnerable. Like, if Jay didn’t let him in the door, he might actually hurt him.

 

As for why, six months later, when Taecyeon kissed him, he kissed back – Jay didn’t have anything to blame for that but himself.

 

“What about you?” the man asked now. “What would you do? You want to come out, Jay? You want to be official? That what you want? I didn’t know you cared.”

 

This again. “If I didn’t care,” he bit out. “I wouldn’t be doing this. I’m thirty-four, Taecyeon. Not fucking four.”

 

At first, Taecyeon looked like he was going to retort. It was in the set of his mouth, on the verge of spitting out the first hurtful thing he could think of to say. But then, he scrubbed a hand through his mercifully short hair – that shaggy do, Jay would never forgive what stylist decided to let him have his way – and sighed. “I’m staying,” he repeated. “I don’t feel like getting mobbed, or getting roped into crisis control.” A jerk of his head at Jay’s outfit. “You going somewhere fancy?”

 

Jay struggled between demanding to know where Taecyeon got off, inviting himself over for another day, and being a grown-up. At last, he said, “MNET interview. Not like anyone’s gonna watch it, today. Should reschedule.”

 

Taecyeon eyed him. “Reschedule, then. We can fuck.”

 

“Yeah? From over there.”

 

Over time, the twenty-year old tree had grown into its limbs. It didn’t make it less awkward, him climbing over the low, glass table and into Jay’s lap. And he weighed a fucking ton. Jay pushed him off, they somehow entangled and then disentangled their legs, and in the midst, managed to mash their lips together. Their teeth clacked.

 

“There’s a fucking reason we do this on the bed, you fucker.”

 

Taecyeon unbuttoned his shirt for him. A bit more manoeuvring, a frustrated ban against all future non-bedroom activitites, and a numb shoulder later – you giant _idiot_ – and then Taecyeon was sliding onto him, still loose and slick from the night before.

 

Jay decided he’d had enough of being squashed, and shoved and kicked him onto his back, before pushing in again. The choked off gasp he got was more than enough of a reward. “This is better.”

 

“Shut up and move already.”

 

He leaned down, let Taecyeon lick his tongue into his mouth. And then he pulled out, almost all the way. Before slamming back in again.

 

Afterwards, both of them fucked out and sleepy again – they weren’t teenagers, were they – Jay said, because he couldn’t not say it, not just because he could: “That’s not why I asked. You know it’s not.”

 

There wasn’t an answer, right away. Just the sound of breathing. The smell of sweat and sex. And then, Taecyeon got up, grabbed his shirt from the heap of clothes on the floor, and pulled it on. “I know you don’t want to come out, Jay. If that’s what you’re trying to say. But it’s not.”

 

It shouldn’t be this bitter. He was making it bitter. But what could he do? He felt bitter. Like coffee beans ground into dust and mixed with charcoal, served black.

 

Taecyeon didn’t look at him. Too busy sticking his arms through his sleeves. “He should say the kid came onto him. That’s what I think he should do.”

 

“That wasn’t what I asked, either.” it was like watching a train crash, except that he was at the steering wheel. “I asked, if you would drop him.”

 

The back of Taecyeon’s neck was a burnished bronze. Calculated days in the sun, and countless hours benchpressing and dancing till his legs gave out. Jay remembered that life. In a similar way, a really different way, he still lived it. 

 

He still lived it.

 

“And I said,” his boyfriend’s voice didn’t crack. Didn’t so much as change in pitch. “Don’t test me.”

 

The door to Jay’s bedroom banged shut.

 

The phone, abandoned on the carpet, buzzed. It’d been doing that for a while now. Simon D, probably wanting to bite his head off and feed it to his secretary. Poor sod, version four hundred.

 

He closed his eyes. It wasn’t like he was going to be able to get a new shirt until Taecyeon finished with his temper tantrum, and unlocked _Jay’s_ door, anyway. He might as well sleep. 

 

 

 

Jinyoung was the only one, right now, who’d knock.

 

Sure, Jaebum’d locked the door, so sooner or later, they would all have to knock or dig out the set of master keys, which, score, were actually in their manager’s custody, so maybe that didn’t mean much. But Jinyoung was the only one who’d knock like that, right now. Like he wasn’t trying to kick the door in.

 

Mark was pissed at him, too.

 

It made Jaebum feel uncharitable. Wish he’d been less bloody responsible and just jammed his headphones on, the jagged, incomplete chords of his newest song playing over and over again at maximum volume. Then, Jinyoung’s quiet, polite knock, would have gone unheard.

 

But Jaebum was gay and indiscreet, not a bastard. So he rolled off his bed, and opened the door.

 

The person who used to be his best friend looked at him, neutral face belying the gentleness of his manners, and slipped under Jaebum’s arm, into his room. The blinds were drawn. Jinyoung’s fingers twitched two of the metal slats apart. “Mark and I are staying here,” he said. His back to the room. “Jinyoung-hyung is having enough trouble getting past the crowd. We won’t make it.”

 

“Where are you going to sleep?”

 

Jinyoung let the slats snap back into place. “Not that again.”

 

A snort left his mouth. He crossed his arms. “What, again? It was just a question. A valid question. You’re so sensitive.”

 

“Don’t I have a right to be?”

 

The green digital letters of the clock morphed to read, 0900. Sunlight crept into the room in thin stripes, falling over the unmade bed, the music sheets strewn over the desk, the guitar lying on its side on the floor. A hand came up to cover Jinyoung’s eyes. “I’m sorry, hyung. This is difficult enough for you, as it is.”

 

He picked up the guitar, laid it in the case, took his frustration out on the zipper. It’d been years since he took it out on Jinyoung, or on any of the others. He wasn’t going to start now. Especially not now.

 

Years ago, Jinyoung would have sat on the bed. Now, he slid down onto the floor, legs akimbo and face still hidden. “What Jinyoung-hyung said. It’s a good solution.”

 

“A good – ”

 

“Not a good solution. The best one. The only one. No one even knows who it is. His face wasn’t in the picture. If you – ”

 

He didn’t know why his voice had to be so harsh. The simmering anger. The callousness of the reasoning. Bitterness. Fear. “I kissed him. Me. I’m not going to say he was the only one doing the making out, like – like – ”

 

“It’s wrong?”

 

Jinyoung’s hand dropped. Their eyes met. Over wooden flooring, and the remnants of scratched-out stickers on an old guitar case. It was such a familiar thing. Scene. As if, were he to reach out his hand, past a screen as opaque and futile as water, he would have drawn out so many snapshots just like this.

 

In the strongest of these snapshots, Jinyoung had been smiling. A sad, companionable smile. There was no comradeship in his gaze, now. And the understanding was, if not begrudging, laced with iron.

 

It shouldn’t matter, that Jinyoung understood him. Jaebum knew he did. They’d talked about this, just so that there would be no misunderstanding. So that they wouldn’t ruin their relationship, or the team. They talked about everything else, so why not this? Calmly. Maturely. Like the adults they fancied themselves to be.

 

Jaebum had been all of twenty-four years old.

 

“It’s not wrong.” His voice was soothing. It didn’t used to be. Jaebum remembered a time, farther and farther away from him now, when he’d told Wonpil that Jinyoung’s voice sounded like cat claws on a blackboard. “What you did, I don’t – I’m not brave enough to do that. I.”

 

He shifted his gaze from Jaebum’s. Swallowed. Then with obvious force, looked back. “I’m proud of you, hyung.”

 

Jaebum’s throat was dry. Closed up. The words were difficult to say. Maybe, that was why he chose the hardest ones. The worst ones. “But it’s different, right? Being proud of me in private, and in public.”

 

He hadn’t realised, how open Jinyoung’s face had been, how raw, until it shuttered. With the glow of morning at his back, he was a sharp-edged shadow. “I’m not asking you to be someone you’re not, hyung. I’m glad you told the group. I’m glad you trusted them with that. I’m asking you to be realistic. It’s not just your career at stake.”

 

A sneer stuttered at the corner of Jaebum’s mouth. Uncontrollable. “You say all the right things, Jinyoungie. It doesn’t hide the fact you’re a selfish bitch.”

 

The fingers that Jaebum often caught himself wishing, even now, that he could entangle with his own, clenched. He ploughed on. Relentless. Reckless. “Think of all the kids like us out there, scared of being who they are. Think what I could do for them. Think what I’ll be doing _to_ them, if I go along with this. If I pretend I was attacked by some gay pervert – ”

 

“When did you get so heroic? Your boyfriend?”

 

Jinyoung regretted saying it. He was biting the inside of his cheek.

 

Jinyoung had been crying last night. Jaebum should let it go.

 

What Jinyoung had said was the truth.

 

“Takeshi,” he said. “His name is Takeshi. And, you’re right. He’s the reason.”

 

And because he was doing this for Takeshi, to give him his due, and not to hurt anyone, he didn’t add: did you think I would wait?

 

He waited for Jinyoung to say that it didn’t matter what Takeshi’s name was. To drag their conversation back to the _point_. The silence in the house, the collective intake of breath, wasn’t going to last much longer. Not after Jaebum’d said no to JYP’s face.

 

The man had turned purple. Under different circumstances, it would have been funny.

 

“Do you love him?”

 

Jinyoung liked to surprise.

 

“You don’t get to ask me that.”

 

“I know we,” Soft. Jinyoung, who was anything but as soft as he looked. “Didn’t promise each other anything.”

 

“No.” And it shouldn’t be like this anymore. Not when he had a boyfriend. Not when it’d turned out to be someone else he’d kissed first, touched first, fucked first. “You said we wouldn’t.”

 

“Yes,” said Jinyoung. “And we agreed.”

 

In the quiet, they could hear the chanting. Jaebum pretended he couldn’t hear what they were saying, and imagined instead the looks on the faces of their ordinary, if well-to-do neighbours. At least it was a Sunday.

 

“Jinyoung-hyung won’t terminate you. We would have to replace you. Youngjae can’t pick up the vocals on his own, and the scandal over Jay Park-sunbaenim was bad enough. It’s not an out, hyung. Whatever you do, affects the team. Whatever you decide.”

 

He didn’t answer.

 

The blue and white crosshatch slippers that Bambam and Yugyeom had insisted on buying Jinyoung-hyung, even if he wasn’t going to live with them, edged over the floor. Jinyoung, clambering to his feet.

 

“I’ll keep the others off your back for a while. Think about it.”

 

He picked at the hem of his oldest jeans, tugged on in the panic before JYP came storming into their house.

 

Jinyoung paused at the door. “Hyung,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t – just saying what was the right thing. I really am proud of you. And I’m glad. I’m glad that you’re happy.”

 

“Don’t think I don’t know you better than that, Jinyoung-ah.”

 

“Then,” Quiet. “Then, just, fuck you.”

 

The door clicked shut.

 

 

 

Mark’s room was just as he had left it a week ago. Mattress stripped bare, naked pillow stuffed into the armpit of the ramyeon-coloured couch Jackson bought him in Hong Kong as a joke. To remind him of that terrible hairstyle from 2014. Desk drawers gaping open, a couple of old receipts stuck to the bottom of the second one from the top. Curtains open, but window closed, letting in the weak morning light.

 

He sat on the mattress. Remembered how psyched he and Jackson were, when they moved here and found proper _beds_. With mattresses manufactured sometime in the twenty-first century.

 

Where was Jinyoung going to sleep?

 

Not with Jaebum, that was for sure.

 

The irritation, more than the regular vibrations of his phone, reminded him that he probably had like a dozen texts by now. Sticking his foot out, he hooked his ankle around the door handle, and tugged it until it clicked shut. Score one, for Mark’s incredible flexibility.

 

He took his phone out of his pocket, checked the flashing text.

 

_U BASTARDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD_

No patience. He thumbed call. Listened to the beep-beep, beep-beep.

 

“Who’s this?” The softness of the Mandarin, at least in comparison to the Korean he’d heard shouted from all corners of the second storey since like four in the morning, was misleadingly calming. Especially considering who was speaking. “How did you get this number? This is a private line, you know. I can call the police.”

 

“Leave off it, Han. I’m not in the mood.”

 

An inhalation. He imagined that Han was trying to work out which expletive to use first. Only to hear an exhalation. Loud, and grudging. “So, are you okay or what? It’s on the news, you know. The protest. Some real dumb signs out there. Y’know this article’s trending where an inside source – whoo – says he has AIDS? Pretty much implies you guys have an orgy every Wednesday. Could have let me in on that.”

 

It wasn’t even funny. And Bambam had pointed the article out to him much earlier, as part of a general freakout that ended with him and Yugyeom in their room shouting at each other, before eventually shutting up. How that came about, Mark didn’t care.

 

It wasn’t even funny, and it reminded him he was fucking pissed, but he laughed. “Why, are you afraid I gave you AIDS?”

 

“Nah, you’re not that adventurous.”

 

They were quiet for a bit. Mark ran his finger over the pattern threaded into his mattress, and listened to his boyfriend breathe.

 

“I knew it would be bad,” Han said. “I guess I didn’t know it would be this bad. Or, I knew, but I didn’t really. You know?”

 

“No.” Even though he did.

 

“I’m coming back to Korea.”

 

“Why? It’s not like we can meet up, anyway. Maybe not for,” his anger was sudden, and red. “Months, after this.”

 

“We’re friends. Friends meet up all the time.”

 

Mark scrubbed his eyes. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. Fuck, I even got my own place.”

 

“Friends stay over at each other’s places all the time.”

 

But it was half-hearted. Mark imagined that Han was drumming his fingers on whatever surface was nearest to him. Abruptly: “I wish I could be there, Yi En-ah. With you.”

 

The name – no one called him that, not even his parents, not since his grandma died – made his eyes hot. He didn’t cry. Mark didn’t cry easy. “This is enough.”

 

“It’s not, but.”

 

He fell back onto the mattress, curled into himself. “Do you sometimes think, we aren’t going anywhere? Do you ever feel like that?”

 

It felt like a confession. An admission. A submission. It felt like it was hard to say, left him drained, even if it didn’t come out of his mouth that way. Han’s answer wasn’t as smooth. Rough around the edges, just like he was. But the sincerity of it, the pure force of his emotion, was an anchor in this storm.

 

“Yeah,” said Han. “All the time.”


	3. Chapter 3

The walls around their compound were high, and smooth. Unscaleable. The builders in this part of Gangnam were used to putting in the security measures commensurate to the needs of their celebrity, or at least, dangerously rich clientele. Jinyoung lived in an apartment block with equally tight security, in a flat that was a little bigger than he was used to. He’d never had a place to himself before, not at home, and not in Seoul. Sometimes, it was a dream come true. Other times, he was afraid to turn on the music, because the sound of it overwhelming the silence, reminded him how alone he was.

 

Water lapped against the edge of the swimming pool, a quiet scene broken by Bambam’s figure, face turned towards the high walls, hands on his hips. Jinyoung moved soundlessly towards him, and shoved him in.

 

Or tried to. Bambam went rigid under his hands, then pushed back. There was a struggle, eerily quiet, before Bambam pulled free, hopping off to the side. “Hyung! What the fuck are you playing at?”

 

The actual fury on his face wasn’t that surprising, really.

 

Jinyoung held his hands up. “Sorry.”

 

“Really, what the fuck, this is all happening, and – ”

 

They couldn’t hear the protest from here. The house was a five-thousand square foot buffer. Jinyoung kicked off his slippers, reached for the hem of his shirt. Bambam gripped his shoulder. “Hyung, what are you doing?”

 

“Let’s jump into the pool. I’ll race you.”

 

“Hyung!” Jinyoung moved. Bambam grabbed his arm instead. “Hyung,” he said. Frowning at the space between them. “Jaebum-hyung. He isn’t really gay, is he?”

 

“He is.”

 

His throat was dry.

 

Bambam shook his head. “He doesn’t act gay.”

 

He smiled. Couldn’t stop himself. Didn’t want to. Bambam let go of his arm, as if it burned. Jinyoung hoped it did, and then forced himself to take a breath. He had to understand. He had to be understanding. “What do gay people act like?”

 

“What they act like – ” A meaningless gesture. “Like – I mean, if any of us were going to be gay, I though it would be, like, you.”

 

“So gay people act like me.”

 

“That’s not,” a swallow. “That’s not what I meant! I just – you like touching people all the time, and – ”

 

Blood was drumming in Jinyoung’s ears. He pulled his shirt off, stepped out of his slacks. And then at a run, dive-bombed into the water. When he resurfaced, Bambam was still squealing. He laughed. “Come in,” he said. “Come in.”

 

Bambam bit his lip, the way he did when he was uncomfortable.

 

“Come in,” he said. “And I’ll tell you a secret.”

 

An edged silence. And then Bambam shucked off his own clothes and slid in, too. They floated there, Jinyoung’s hair plastered to his wet face, Bambam’s fingers tight around the edge of the pool. Almost as if he was afraid to let go.

 

Jinyoung said, “Kim Ji Hoo.”

 

“Who?”

 

“Twelve years ago, he came out on TV. In some show, about gay people. Hate messages on his fancafés, his contract terminated, everything. Maybe you remember him.”

 

Bambam had been twelve at the time. Wouldn’t come to Korea to train for another one and a half years. He shook his head.

 

This part of the pool was shallow. They were both standing. The water felt like a shield, like he’d hoped it would. Hiding him from sight, shrouding him in ridiculousness. He had never said this to anyone, before. Not to Mark. And definitely not to Jaebum. Even though Jaebum must have known. “Kim Ji Hoo killed himself.”

 

Bambam’s mouth opened. Closed. “Are you saying,” pitch climbing in disbelief. “Jaebum-hyung might – ”

 

“I was fifteen at the time,” Jinyoung said. “Already thinking, you know, maybe entertainment was something I wanted to do. I wanted to dance. Learn to sing. I really loved dancing back then, even if it wasn’t something I was ever going to be that good at.” Not like Yugyeom. Not like JB. He didn’t really resent them, anymore.

 

He couldn’t let Jaebum do this by himself.

 

“I’d known for a while, by then. Hard not to, in middle school. Everybody’d be talking about breasts and, I don’t know, SNSD, and I’d be looking too long at Lee Teuk’s abs, or wishing my classmate, I had a crush on him, wishing my classmate would hold my hand a little longer.”

 

“Hyung,” Bambam said. Trying to shake his head. It looked as if he was spasming. “What are you saying – ”

 

He was speaking too quickly. He was afraid. “I was fifteen,” he said. “A guy killed himself for being like me.”

 

Summer bore down on them. They were meant to be producing their summer single next week. Who knew how long they would have to suspend that, now. Jinyoung felt a headache coming on. Swollen and brittle. He waded past Bambam, clambered out of the pool, and laid himself flat on the baking tiles.

 

His head felt light.

 

“What,” how helpless Bambam sounded. “I don’t understand. You’re – too – Jaebum-hyung isn’t going to _kil_ _l_ himself – what do you want me to do?”

 

Lying like this, he was pretty much level with Bambam, floating still at the edge of the pool. He caught his gaze, held it. Kept the relief from his voice. “What I’m saying is, you don’t have to understand. You don’t have to think it’s right. But if you could accept it, if you could let it go – ”

 

“So we just don’t talk about it.” Sharp. “We just pretend it’s not true. No, that’s not it. We just pretend like it doesn’t exist.”

 

What was it with everyone and being honest?

 

“Can’t you do that, at least? For a friend.”

 

Bambam looked down at the tiled floor. His clenched fingers. When he spoke, his tone was so reasonable. It struck Jinyoung sometimes, now, that this wasn’t the seventeen-year old boy he had debuted with. The boy was twenty-three now. Just a year younger than Jinyoung had been, when he thought he knew what he wanted, and what he couldn’t have.

 

‘If we do that,” said Bambam. “Won’t all of us turn out like you and Jaebum-hyung?”

 

The sound of the water, an inexorable rhythm around them, filled the space.

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“Jaebum-hyung wanted you to live with us.”

 

The words bit free. “I know. I think the whole of Korea knows – ”

 

“Jaebum-hyung wanted you to live with us, but he didn’t make you stay.”

 

Jinyoung stared at him. “Did you hear us fighting?”

 

Bambam didn’t seem to think this warranted explanation. “I don’t want us to turn out like that, hyung. I don’t want there to be things we can’t say.”

 

The headache was like the skin of a balloon against his skull. He pressed his forehead against his arm. Shut his eyes. He could feel the tension in his own shoulders. The building anger.

 

Jaebum holed up in his room.

 

Mark.

 

This wasn’t even his fault.

 

It wasn’t his mess.

 

And that, the sudden sadness, was the worst part.

 

“Hyung?”

 

Jinyoung didn’t cry easily. He’d already used up his six-month quota. He wasn’t about to use up the next. “The lot of you are so fucking idealistic.”

 

“Did you just – ”

 

“Leave me alone.”

 

“You _swore_.”

 

“Just. Go away.”

 

Bambam climbed out of the pool. His movements sharp. Edged. Jinyoung let him go. He’d asked him to.

 

Sometimes, he hated his apartment. It was too large. Too empty. He couldn’t turn the music on, without being reminded that all it came up against were walls.

 

At other times, he wanted nothing more.

 

 

 

The thud of Jay’s foot on the bedpost was what woke him up. And the cursing. In the year between his leaving and his coming back, Jay’s Korean had somehow become fluent. But he still didn’t speak it if he could speak English instead. The language that tumbled out of his mouth when he wasn’t thinking, was always English.

 

Taecyeon wasn’t sure why. But this irritated him. He buried his face into his pillow. Mumbled, “What the fuck are you doing?”

 

“Trying not to wake you up, you ungrateful bastard.”

 

“Well, you failed.”

 

“Yeah.” Steel. “I got that.”

 

Jay’s wifebeater hit Taecyeon’s head. He peeled it off. Reached over to pull the blankets back on Jay’s side of the bed. A pause, as Jay tried to work himself around to this gesture of conciliation. Then his warmth was sliding in next to Taecyeon, who turned automatically and buried his face in the junction between Jay’s shoulder and his neck.

 

“Seriously. You’re like a giant puppy. So much for your image.”

 

A beat. It wasn’t that Jay didn’t talk about 2PM. They couldn’t talk about Taecyeon’s life without mentioning 2PM. But going in, Taecyeon always felt like his teeth were clenched. Waiting.

 

Most of the time, it was just him being sensitive.

 

Sometimes, it wasn’t.

 

He could feel Jay breathing. Steady.

 

“How was MNET?”

 

“Boring.” A hand gripped the back of his neck. With the instinct of habit, he raised his head, fitted his mouth to Jay’s. Who tasted heady and bitter. Soju.

 

“Were you drinking?”

 

“Of course I was drinking. It was MNET, not some variety show. Your hands are in the wrong place.”

 

Taecyeon was still half-asleep. He’d been dreaming something before Jay woke him up with his two left feet and his cursing. It escaped him now, what it’d been. But the dredges of uncertainty, of desperation, left him exhausted.

 

Softly. “What? Too tired?”

 

Any other time, he would have just said yes. This time, he just stuck his hand down Jay’s pants, wrapped his fingers around his cock. Jay turned, giving him better access, reaching for the waistband of his boxers at the same time.

 

“Wait,” he said. “I’ll suck you off.”

 

Jay switched the bedside lamp on. He didn’t like fucking in the dark. It’d taken Taecyeon a while to get used to it. To not feel too self-conscious. He’d screwed his fair share of boys in the States, but Korea was different. When he was here, he felt like his parents’ expectations, his grandparents’ expectations, were a real thing. A tangible thing. If Jay ever felt the same way, he didn’t show it.

 

When Taecyeon went down on him more gently than usual, almost reverent, he cursed, and grabbed Taecyeon’s hair.

 

Afterward, Jay brought him off with his hand, mouth swallowing anything he could have said, or moaned, or sworn. Taecyeon returned the favour by digging his fingers into Jay’s shoulder, bruising.

 

A wet towel was the second thing that night to hit him in the face. He peeled it off, and set about wiping himself clean. The sheets were amazingly not sticky.

 

Jay took the towel from him, cleaned himself off, and then threw it in the general direction of the bathroom. Like that made it any tidier. The bedsprings didn’t squeak when he flopped back down. Taecyeon didn’t know why he’d expected them to.

 

There was something about the golden light, he supposed, that reminded him of that first dorm they’d all shared together. The way it lit half of Jay’s face, highlighted the imperfections as much as the perfections. And yet, when his boyfriend’s gaze slid sideways, met his own, it was unreadable.

 

“Why won’t you answer me?”

 

Taecyeon thought about getting up. Slamming the door. Even if he did end up sleeping on the couch, or driving home at fuck o’clock, slamming the door would at least give him some satisfaction.

 

But if he did that every time they fought, where would they be?

 

He forced himself to speak calmly. “Why does it matter if I answer you or not?”

 

“It doesn’t.”

 

“If I say something you don’t like, are you going to break up with me?” He’d thought the words so many times in his head, but they came out cracked anyway.

 

Jay sat up. Scrubbed a hand through his buzzcut with such violence that it had to hurt. “What the hell is wrong with you? What kind of question is that?”

 

“I don't know, Jay. This seems really important to you.”

 

“It is important to me. It’s.” He stopped. “That kid. This JB. He’s going to be alone.”

 

I was alone.

 

There was a time when Taecyeon would have felt bitter about that. When it would have pissed him off. That was the thing about the army. Losing your name, losing your identity, losing all control over your own life. It changed you. Not in some obvious, fundamental way. Just.

 

In the army, on guard duty every other night, there was a lot of time to think.

 

He’s not alone, Taecyeon could have said. But he, of all people, knew that that wasn’t true. So he said nothing. He just accepted it.

 

Maybe, years ago, if they had all just accepted it, they wouldn’t be where they were now. With so many things they couldn’t say.

 

Jay scrubbed his hair again. Then swung his legs off the bed. “I’m going to.” He didn’t finish the excuse.

 

He didn’t bother with the farce, and Taecyeon didn’t bother to speak. Just found his hand in the sheets, and held on tight.

 

An explosive sigh. Jay’s fingers flexed in his. “I’m just going to.”

 

But he lay back down.

 

The air-conditioned air blew cold over them. Drying their sweat, whispering ice into their skin. Taecyeon shut his eyes. When he woke up, he wouldn’t remember this second dream, either. Just the uncertainty, and Jay’s body pressed against his.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A reader mentioned that he/she was confused by the Jay Park/Ok Taecyeon pairing in this fic, so seeing as most readers seem to come from the GOT7 fandom, this is a brief explanation.
> 
> In 2009, Jay Park from 2PM had to leave Korea because of an Internet scandal. Someone hacked into his personal account, and leaked messages he'd written as a trainee, complaining about Korea. He suffered intense backlash. Although he was not expelled from the group immediately, and 2PM and Park Jinyoung expressed support for him at the time, his contract was terminated in 2010, allegedly due to something else he had done, which the company refused to explain. You can read more about it on his Wikipedia page and the 2PM Wikipedia page. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, guys!

They were told not to read the media. Looking at the tense, twitching faces surrounding the heap of jajangmyeon that Youngjae and Jackson had cooked for dinner, their stomachs being the first to drive them from their rooms and into the kitchen, Mark was pretty certain nobody had listened.

 

Jaebum and Yugyeom, the biggest eaters, were picking at their food. Bambam kept glancing at Jinyoung out of the corner of his eye, an attention Jinyoung and Youngjae were devoting to their plates, and Jackson. Jackson was jerking his head in that way that meant he was going to speak. Shit.

 

“The longer we put it off, the more it’s going to look like we’re lying to save your neck.”

 

Except for Youngjae, who flinched, no one reacted.

 

At first. And then, Jaebum said, “That’s because we are lying to save _our_ necks.”

 

“Are you accusing me of being selfish, right now?”

 

Deliberately, Jaebum twisted noodles around his chopsticks.

 

Jackson’s chair scraped back. Youngjae squeaked. Torn between rolling his eyes, and just letting them get on with it, Mark eventually settled for kicking Jackson in the leg. “Sit down,” he said. “We aren’t going to fight.”

 

A snarl. And then, in Mandarin: “Why the hell not? He’s clearly looking for one.”

 

Mark refused to be dragged into childish provocation. In Korean, he said, “Sit down.”

 

In a low voice, Yugyeom said, “It’s Jaebum-hyung’s fault, why are you picking on Jackson-hyung?”

 

Anytime now, Jinyoung. At least, for whatever reason, Bambam wasn’t jumping in too.

 

“You want to talk about this like adults?” Mark asked. “Because, that’s what you are, aren’t you, Yugyeommie? Then shut up and stop taking sides.”

 

“I’m not a kid anymore, you can’t keep telling me to shut up – ”

 

“Shut _up_ ,” Youngjae moaned.

 

“You _are_ picking on me – ”

 

“All of you,” Jaebum said. “Shut it. I’m not putting off anything. I’ve decided. I’m not going to deny it.”

 

The clink of Jinyoung’s chopsticks on the side of his porcelain plate, was loud in the stupefied silence. “You aren’t just not denying it. You’re coming out.”

 

Mark watched as Jaebum finally, finally put his chopsticks down, lifted his head. Met Jinyoung’s eyes. What did Jaebum see in them, that made him smile like that? With a bitter, angry twist.

 

What did Jinyoung see, that turned his words to ash in his mouth. “They’re asking you to die. They’re telling you to go and die. No one is on your side. Not your fans. Not the public. Not JYP.”

 

“Not you.”

 

“This isn’t about me.”

 

“This isn’t,” Jinyoung repeated. His calm shredding, fading. He had to take a breath, just to keep speaking. “About me. This isn’t about you. This is about whether GOT7 survives. You come out and get terminated, we’ll be branded a bunch of homophobes. What will that do to our reputation in America? You come out and don’t get terminated, we might as well kiss our careers here goodbye. This is the _reality_ , hyung. Why can’t you understand that?”

 

“I’ll resign.”

 

“That won’t make a difference.”

 

“So, you’re fine with me resigning as long as it would have made a difference.”

 

“Stop,” Jackson said. “Stop twisting what Jinyoung is saying. You fucking – ”

 

Jinyoung said, “This guy. Takeshi. Have you talked to him?”

 

It was Bambam’s turn to flinch. Abruptly, he looked like he was going to be sick. Abruptly, he stopped looking at Jinyoung and fixed his gaze on the glass of water in front of him instead. Mark wondered what the hell was wrong with him. Was it the name? Making it seem like this guy Jaebum had kissed, he was real? He existed.

 

Mark realised that he was crumpling the hem of his jacket into a ball.

 

Jaebum had been taken by surprise, too. It took him a moment to answer. “Yeah. We talked, just now.”

 

“What does he say?”

 

A muscle was working in Jaebum’s cheek. What, was he angry? Did he think Jinyoung had no right to ask? Did he want to protect Takeshi from all of this. Well, fuck that. He’d decided of his own free will to date a celebrity, hadn’t he.

 

Han was in a photoshoot right now. He wouldn’t be boarding the plane until two a.m. Even then, he would only be here for two days. Mark had no idea how he was going to get out to see him.

 

He made himself let go of his jacket. Jackson was looking at him funny.

 

“Takeshi,” Jaebum said. Through obviously gritted teeth. “Wants me to do whatever I think is best.”

 

“Then, he’s fine with it.”

 

If someone was going to explode, Mark had thought it would be Jackson. But it was Jaebum standing up right now. His hands flat on the table. “Just because he’s fine with it, doesn’t mean he doesn’t expect things from me. You know what those are, Jinyoungie? Expectations?”

 

“Jaebum-hyung,” Youngjae murmured.

 

“You know what,” Jaebum said. “I’m sick of this. I’m sick of how you – all of you only think about yourselves. I’m gay. Yes, I’m flaming gay. I like making out with guys. I like fucking _men_. And I’m not ashamed of it.”

 

Jackson was the next to go. “We aren’t asking you to be ashamed of it, you fucker! Stop making this out to be something it isn’t. You aren’t some kind of victim, okay, you’re just bloody careless. How could you be so bloody – ”

 

“Jackson,” Jinyoung said.

 

But no one was listening.

 

“We aren’t Nobel prize winners,” Jackson was shouting. “We’re idols. We need people to like us. Like us. You know what that is, Jaebum? Or is it that too pedestrian for you?”

 

“You’re right. I am an idol. So I have a responsibility – ”

 

“Fuck that – ”

 

“To _not throw gay teenagers under the bus._ ”

 

Jaebum’s vocal cords were standing out. Jackson was breathing like he’d run a marathon. “You sure,” he managed. So furious that his voice came out a pitch higher. “Act like a big guy for somebody who can’t even look out for his group.”

 

“Don’t,” said Jinyoung. Before Jaebum could retort. “Let’s talk about this calmly.”

 

“You mean, let’s talk about this until I come round to your view. That’s what we did before, right?”

 

Jinyoung slammed his fist into the table. Stood up, too. His face was blank. “Yah,” he said. Flat. “Don’t blame this on me. Don’t you dare blame this all on me. I wasn’t the only one talking on that balcony.”

 

What the hell. Mark reached for Jackson’s wrist, and Jinyoung’s. Yanked. “Sit down.” At a nod, Youngjae took Jaebum’s arm, too. “Sit down, now.”

 

Under his fingers, Jinyoung was vibrating. Not a good sign.

 

Jaebum wrenched his own arm free. “I’ve decided. Nothing anyone here says is going to change my mind.”

 

“Is that,” quiet. “All we mean to you?”

 

Mark resisted the urge to slap himself in the face. Take away the misery of being fucking awake.

 

It’d been a long time since Jaebum yelled at any of them. Mostly, it was because he’d grown up, mellowed out, figured out that what he did, hurt other people. But, Mark thought with a viciousness that was unlike him, too passionate for him, it was also because, like Jinyoung, he’d recognised that hurting people was easy. Why strain your vocal cords to do it?

 

And Mark would have bet, Mark knew that this was why, even though Jaebum’s jaw was jutting out, and his teeth looked like they were trying to ground each other out of existence, and his hands were clenched, he could say, as reasonably as heat in summer: “Not everything is a game, Jinyoungie. Not everyone acts as well as you do.”

 

Jinyoung’s voice was iron. A challenge. “What does that mean?”

 

“Hey,” Mark said. “Man – ”

 

“You’re like me.”

 

Youngjae covered his face with his hands.

 

“Hey,” Mark snapped.

 

“I am,” said Jinyoung. “I am like you.”

 

Jackson dropped back into his chair, turned this way and that, as if looking for something to throw, or to punch. He settled for kicking the table leg. “You guys,” he said. “Fuck, you guys.”

 

Yugyeom’s voice was shrill. “So, what? Both are you are gay now? Who else is gay? Is everyone gay. Oh, my god. Oh, my god.”

 

“I’m not gay,” Bambam said. “Shut up, okay. Just shut up.”

 

Fight, maknae version. “Don’t tell me to shut up. I’ve had it up to here with all of you telling me what to fucking do – ”

 

“Since we’re outing people,” Mark said. He hadn’t known his voice could sound so poisonous. “I might as well say I’m gay too. Put it out there.”

 

He didn’t look at Jinyoung. He couldn’t. Because, Jinyoung would be looking at him, sorry, regretful, sorry, and Mark couldn’t take that right now. It’d been his own stupid, fucking decision. 

 

“Everyone is gay,” Yugyeom moaned. “Everyone is gay.”

 

“Maybe,” Mark said. The English was harsh and beautiful on his tongue. “Maybe, but only JB was dumb enough to get caught, and now the rest of us have to suffer.”

 

Suffer, Youngjae mouthed. Not understanding.

 

Jaebum, who didn’t speak anything but Korean if he could help it, looked furious.

 

“Some of us,” Mark said, switching back to Korean. Just to make sure Jaebum understood him this time. The shape of the words, if not their meaning. “Don’t want to be heroes. We just want to fuck our boyfriends, okay. Okay?”

 

So he regretted it as soon as he’d said it. He and Han had agreed. They’d promised. Han was getting on a plane to see him now, even though his schedules in China were going to be screwed, and they wouldn’t get to meet up anyhow, and he’d put their relationship at risk to one-up Jaebum.

 

Mark wanted to not be here.

 

He didn’t want to be with himself.

 

If he couldn’t do anything about the second, he could at least deal with the first. “I’m going home.”

 

Jackson was kneading his forehead. “You can’t.”

 

“I’ll just knock’em down if I have to!”

 

“Mark,” he said. “You can’t.”

 

The sobriety was like a wall. A fucking fact. Mark said, “Fine.”

 

Slamming his bedroom door on them, letting the sound travel down the spiral staircase into the tense, wrecked silence, was almost as good.

 

 

 

Taecyeon left Jay sleeping. The digital clock blinked 0500 over Jay’s open, drooling mouth; the summer sun already sticking its fingers through the slit in the curtains. He kicked Jay’s clothes from the night before into the laundry basket, shrugged on a T-shirt and pants he checked to make sure were his own, and then stood there for a second. Wondering if he should say something. Like goodbye. Or, I love you.

 

They didn’t say that, yet.

 

It was a girl thing, he guessed. Jay would probably cut his throat first. Taecyeon didn’t know what he thought about it himself. He tried not to.

 

Jay let out a snore.

 

What the hell was he simpering for?

 

Squatting next to the bed, he poked Jay in the forehead.

 

A weird noise. And then a hand slapped his away. “What. The fuck.”

 

He grinned. “I’m going.”

 

Jay reached behind him, patted the empty space, then latched onto Taecyeon’s pillow. He threw it at his face.

 

JYP Entertainment had a back door. It was out of bounds most of the time. Nobody wanted the paparazzi to find the emergency exit. But with the kind of angry mob outside right now, Taecyeon tried his luck. His keycard worked.

 

There were more people crowding the corridors than usual. Trainees in clumps in the outer training areas, anxious PR people, even more anxious-looking managers. Sungjin and Wonpil from Day6 were skulking in the corner between two of the music rooms. They didn’t seem to be talking, or doing anything, but the way they greeted him, hurried and mumbling – it was as if they’d committed a crime.

 

When he opened the door to the 2PM practice room, Khun’s voice cut across the space. “Is your phone dead? Did it get stolen?”

 

Wooyoung was stretching in front of the mirror. He eyed Taecyeon’s reflection, but said nothing. Taecyeon raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry.”

 

“Where were you?” Chansung asked. “Jinyoung-hyung is livid.”

 

“Not at him though,” Junho pointed out. “Don’t think he even noticed.”

 

Taecyeon dropped his overnight bag onto the floor. “Where’s Minjun-hyung?”

 

“Crisis management,” said Chansung.

 

None of them looked particularly guilty for having made Jun K. the sacrificial lamb.

 

“Where were you,” Khun demanded. “This choreography is fucking hard. I’m too old for this.”

 

They ignored him. Ever since they’d come back from the military, and Khun had realised, courtesy of bloody Minjun, that this meant he had two years’ more experience than they did on the entertainment scene, he’d been throwing his supposed age in their faces at every opportunity.

 

“Where were you?” Wooyoung asked for the group at large.

 

He shrugged. “Sleeping. Avoiding Jinyoung-hyung.”

 

No one looked convinced. He wondered if it was that he was bad at lying, or that they were all jaded.

 

He decided not to think about that. “Are we going to practise or not?”

 

Hours later, when they were taking their first break, Taecyeon twisted off the cap of his second water bottle, and tried to pin down the weird feeling he’d been getting since they turned off the music.

 

Khun mimicked the way he cocked his head. “What?”

 

Taecyeon contemplated his stupid, too-pretty face.

 

He hadn’t thought Jay was pretty when he met him. He’d liked how he laughed, sharp and loud. He’d liked watching him take his shirt off after practice, or in the dorm, or fucking anywhere, really. He’d liked talking to him. Because, when it was just the two of them, or them and Khun at any rate, Jay became a different person. Less restricted.

 

None of these were the reasons why he’d looked for him after he was discharged.

 

“Ah,” Taecyeon said. He clapped his hands together.

 

“ _What_?”

 

“None of your business.”

 

Khun’s eyebrows knitted. His hand tightened around the neck of his waterbottle.

 

Chansung groaned. “We’re too old for this.”

 

“Water fight!” Junho crowed.

 

Wooyoung turned on the music. It was the fastest way to get them all to shut up. As Junho’s stupid voice filled the room, Taecyeon, and more reluctantly, Khun scrambled to their feet.

 

Good thing, too. Taecyeon had never beaten Khun in a water fight, and he didn’t really want to be forced to admit: the weird thing was, after walking down those packed corridors, this room was the first place he’d been in where GOT7 and JB hadn’t even been mentioned.

 

As punishment for missing practice, by wordless unanimity of the group, Taecyeon stayed behind to perfect the choreography everyone else had been repeating over and over for two days.

 

He should have realised they’d leave an ambush for him too.

 

Khun, sticking ice cream in his face.

 

The grin was automatic. Awkward. He’d never been the best liar. Jay had pointed this out to him once. In the middle of a fight. Their first one, actually. Since Taecyeon turned up on his doorstep all those months ago.

 

You, he’d said. Always lie by omission. Like that makes it fucking better.

 

“Aren’t we too old for ice cream?” He snatched it before Khun could take it away.

 

A scoff. “No one’s too old for ice cream.”

 

They were sitting on a bench just outside the training room, on the second floor. Every other space around them was a music room. Small, cramped spaces stuffed with keyboards, or guitars, or singing and recording equipment. It was a privileged spot, the practice room on this floor. Out of the public eye, away from gawking trainees, film crews, and in winter, the unbearable warmth of the basement heater.

 

“Are you seeing someone?”

 

Khun was unbearably straightforward when he wanted to be. One of the things they used to say every one of them’d absorbed from Jay, to everybody’s misfortune. Before they stopped mentioning him.

 

It was a PR thing, at first. Taecyeon had railed against it.

 

And then, slowly, unbearably, incomprehensibly – it was all so incomprehensible, back then – it’d become part of who they really were, too.

 

“We’re allowed to date now,” he said. Tearing the packet open.

 

Khun’s words were toneless. “Is that the best you can do.”

 

He laughed. Didn’t answer.

 

“Okay,” Khun said. Frustrated. “I don’t care who you’re with, Taecyeon. I just want to know why you haven’t told us. Like you said, it’s not like you’re breaking any rules.”

 

He said, “I don’t know.”

 

“You don’t know, what?”

 

He hadn’t even taken his ice cream out of its packet yet. It was going to melt. And why the heck had they given Khun this job, anyway? Was it because they were both outsiders, foreigners? It’d been thirteen fucking years.

 

“I don’t know why I’m not telling you.”

 

His friend buried his face in his hands. “This is so like you. I can’t.”

 

Taecyeon stuck his ice cream into his mouth.

 

“Is it,” Khun braced himself. “Someone we know?”

 

He felt like he was standing at the edge of a precipice. He nodded.

 

“Is it someone – close to us? All of us.”

 

The chocolate and vanilla were melting in his mouth. He wanted to swallow. To choke. Again, he nodded.

 

“Oh my god,” Khun said, slipping into English. “Okay. Is it – ”

 

Taecyeon resisted the urge to shut his eyes.

 

“Someone from 2AM?”

 

“What the fuck.”

 

“Oh my god.” Khun let out a breath. “Oh my god. That was our worst nightmare. 2AM – _Jo Kwon_ – oh, thank god.”

 

Taecyeon laughed. He had to. It was ironic. It was so fucking ironic. He started laughing, and he couldn’t really stop, which meant he ended up choking on his ice cream, and a long-suffering Khun had to slap him hard on the back before he could speak again.

 

He leaned his head against the wall behind them. Looked up into the glare of the fluorescent lights.

 

“Khun,” he said. Dredging the name out from a painful part of his throat. “Do you ever think, it’d be nice to see Jay again?”

 

Khun raised his eyebrows. He’d picked this up from Taecyeon. All their mannerisms melting into each other, mixing them up in a way he didn’t know how to un-mix. 

 

They were his best friends in the world.

 

Once, Jay had been too.

 

“Yeah,” Khun said. “Yeah, sometimes. Why?” Wary. “Have you? Seen him.”

 

“No.” Short and simple. “I was just thinking. It’s been a long time. We’re all over thirty now. It’s been a decade.”

 

“There was the AOMG party.”

 

“There was that.”

 

Khun bowed his head. The quiet weighed on them both.

 

“Jay,” said his friend. Eventually. “He’s doing well for himself. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

 

“Are you still angry with him?”

 

He’d thought about saying it for so long that it scared him, how easily it came out. How it was now just out there. Between them.

 

But all Khun said was, “I don’t know.”

 

“You don’t know.”

 

The princely hair was scruffed beyond recognition. Damp and weirdly flat with sweat. Khun’s fingers made it worse. “I want to think I’m not. It’s been years. I want to think it’s all behind us, now. But the truth is, I don’t know. I guess, I guess I would have to see him again. See him properly. Not at some big, damn party. You know?”

 

Taecyeon stuck his ice cream back in his mouth. Worked up the courage to ask the question he was really afraid of.

 

“Do you think he’s still angry with us?”

 

This time, it was Khun’s turn to laugh. “How the hell would I know that?”

 

He sucked vanilla into his throat. Let the cold sink into his gut, under his frozen heart.

 

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, how are we supposed to know.”

 

His friend’s eyebrows were knitting again. Boomerang-ing suspicion. “No way,” he said. “No way, you’re not seeing – ”

 

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

 

“You’re lying.”

 

“I’m not.” Harsh. Angry. He was angry. But at who? At what?

 

There was so much he didn’t know.

 

Khun’s lips were thin. His eyes wide. He was angry, too. A climbing fury. It twisted his face into a mask of itself. 

 

That was the thing, Taecyeon had decided, in the military. That was the problem. They weren’t just more like each other now. They weren’t just different.

 

There was a time when they used to be less dissatisfied. Less screwed up, and vicious with it. Less bitter.

 

“Since when? When did you first go and see him, you bastard – ”

 

He stood up.

 

“Yah!”

 

Taecyeon let the door bang shut behind him. Took the steps at a run. Barrelled past a group of fresh-faced trainees, past Suzy, who hadn’t so much as opened her mouth before he was out the backdoor, and into the flat summer heat.

 

The ice cream was dripping in his hand. He sucked on it once, twice, and then feeling like he was going to throw up, he chucked it into a bin. Flicked his hood over his face, and started for his car, parked down a sidestreet half a mile from here.

 

His phone was vibrating in his pocket. Slipping his hand inside, he turned it off.

 

He should have kept his mouth shut.

 

Jay was going to kill him.

 

He’d been so stupid. Desperate.

 

Jay was going to fucking murder him.

 

And that wasn’t even the reason why Taecyeon wanted to curl into himself and just – just not move.


	5. Chapter 5

Jaebum found them in Mark’s room. The first few times Jinyoung knocked, quiet and polite, Mark’d ignored him. And then when the infamous stubbornness kicked in and he’d thought he would die hearing that _knocking_ in his head, he’d given in and let Jinyoung come in. Jinyoung promptly crawled into bed with Mark, and wrapped his skinny, tentacle-like arms around him with such cutesy pleading that Mark gave in to that, too, and let him stay. They’d been like that, Mark playing Angry Birds on his phone in his sleep boxers and Jinyoung sitting at the desk with a book, for about an hour before Jaebum knocked on the door, tried the knob, and discovered that it wasn’t locked.

 

They’d both forgotten to lock it. Mark glared at Jinyoung, anyway.

 

Their leader’s gaze flicked between the two of them. Uncomfortable. Jinyoung, sensitive as always, moved to get up.

 

“No,” said Jaebum. “Uh. Stay. I was going to say – sorry, later. About that.”

 

Jinyoung didn’t look like he knew what to say, so Mark said it for him. “Great. Next time, when I out you, I’ll just apologise too. Make it all better. How about that?”

 

Jaebum’s jaw was stiffening. “It wasn’t like he had to confirm it.”

 

“No, he’d just have to lie.”

 

“He’s all for – ”

 

“Okay,” said Jinyoung. “You’re sorry. And you’re right. I could have lied.”

 

Jaebum’s face relaxed into its usual coolness. But the air between them seemed to fracture. Jinyoung looked away.

 

“What are you here for?” Mark asked.

 

It was five in the morning. None of them would be awake, especially Jinyoung, except they hadn’t gone to sleep. Jaebum twisted his cap off his head, folded it in half. Mark realised that he was dressed up, like he’d been somewhere. Or on videochat, anyway.

 

“Jinyoung-hyung wants me to reconsider.”

 

How long had that shouting match been, then?

 

Defeat wasn’t a good look on Jaebum. Mark waved him inside. When the door was shut again, and locked this time, he said, “Did you think he was going to go along with it?”

 

Quiet. “I don’t have to do what he says. If he won’t release the info, I can.”

 

Jinyoung’s book was open in front of him. He turned a page. Turned it back.

 

“Mark-hyung.” He looked at Mark when he spoke. Intense. Brittle apprehension in the tightness of his lips. “You have to understand why I’m doing this. I know – I know what the consequences are. But I have to do the right thing.”

 

Jinyoung’s fingers tapped on the table. Like he was thinking about bolting. Mark glared at the back of his head, as if that would transmit his violent rejection of this plan.

 

To Jaebum, he said, “I get that. I get that, but – ”

 

“No,” said the rude idiot. “No, you don’t. I.” He scrubbed his face. “Takeshi. Can I tell you something about Takeshi?”

 

Neither of them looked at the other. Jaebum’d better know what he was doing. “Sure.”

 

The bill of the cap slapped restlessly against a jean-clad thigh. “We met at a fan meeting.”

 

Jinyoung’s shoulders tensed.

 

“He wasn’t a fan.” Clipped. “I went to the loo after, and he was there. He didn’t know who I was, but he asked for my number.”

 

Mark tried not to be judgemental. But. “He asked you out in the loo.”

 

The edge of a smile. “How else do we meet people, hyung? Ordinary people.”

 

“Okay. So you met him in the loo. What next?”

 

The sky was dark against the window. Now that Mark’s headphones were off, he could hear the quiet. When he’d last scrolled through the media reports, people’d been saying that the police were coming to break it up. Freedom of speech was great and all, somebody complained, but it was a residential neighbourhood, for fuck’s sake. Why should everyone else suffer?

 

Mark tried not to be too optimistic.

 

“We texted a couple of times. We went out.” For all that he’d volunteered for the boyfriend talk, Jaebum didn’t seem too eager to talk. “The point is, Takeshi – is comfortable with who he is. It’s not a bad thing to him. A secret thing. And feeling like that when, before – ” He was crushing the cap in his hands. “The point is, it’s good. It’s great. And I want other people like us to know that feeling. To know, they’re fine the way they are. Can you understand that, hyung?”

 

His phone was warm under his fingers.

 

He opened his mouth. “Uh.”

 

The desk chair scraped back. A book snapped shut. Jinyoung said nothing when he left. Didn’t even slam the door.

 

Jaebum pressed his cap over his face. And then he yanked the door open and left too.

 

Not sixty seconds later, the sound of shouting filtered through. Jackson’s face popped through the gap, shiny from lack of sleep, blond hair tousled. “What the hell?”

 

Mark slid his phone under his pillow. Hunkered down, eyes squeezed shut. “Just leave me alone.”

 

“They were just in here, weren’t they? What, were you the wall?”

 

“That would have been fucking nice.”

 

He could tell Jackson was scowling. “What does that mean?”

 

Mark spoke into his pillow. “If that was all. If that was all I was, then that would’ve been fucking nice.”

 

 

 

A breeze cut across the balcony, crisp and cold. Jinyoung gripped the railing, shut his eyes, and breathed in ice, breathed out gas. If he could make the anger disappear the same way, evaporate like so much useless vapour into the air, because it was useless, it was futile, it wasn’t even justified –

 

The balcony door slammed into its slot behind him.

 

“What the fuck?”

 

He opened his eyes. Looked down at the shadows of the trees below. “You were talking to Mark-hyung. I didn’t need to be there.”

 

“I was talking to the fucking both of you.”

 

He could feel Jaebum’s heat at his back. He could sense him, the way he’d been able to sense him since he was seventeen and had a working endocrine system, for goodness’ sake. His face was flushing. He curled against the balcony wall, as if he could shrink himself into obscurity. Away from humiliation.

 

“I don’t want to hear it,” he said.

 

“What.”

 

“I don’t want to hear about your boyfriend.”

 

“God.” A laugh. “Everything is about you. Everything. Did you hear anything I said? Did you even – ”

 

He rounded on Jaebum. He’d wanted to sound cold. It came out spitting furious instead, like a cat with its haunches up and its back rigid. “You could have told me.”

 

“Told you _what_? I was telling you – ”

 

“You could have told me earlier.” He was shouting. “Years ago. When you started dating him. You could have told me earlier, then I – ”

 

“You, what?”

 

It was a challenge.

 

A pitfall.

 

Jinyoung’s throat locked in on itself. A weak attempt by embarassment, self-awareness, to protect what remained of his dignity. But his anger was still building. Boiling over. He wasn’t going to lose to Im Jaebum. “So,” he bellowed. “I could just forget you too, so I could just move on too, you sick fuck!”

 

He’d cursed for the second time in as many days.

 

It was stupid that this realisation, of all the things he’d realised about himself, was what tired him out. He covered his face with his hands.

 

“What,” Jaebum said. Tightly. “Did you think? It’s been years, Jinyoungie. It wasn’t like we had a chance.”

 

“We did.” He wanted to stop talking. He wanted to tell him all the things he’d been wanting to say, right from the beginning. When all of this started. Before. Long, long before. “We could have waited. When we were older. When we retired, we could have.”

 

“Don’t act naïve. You would never have. Your parents.”

 

His throat felt numb. The words weren’t his own. “I would have told them. Eventually. They would have – ”

 

“So we’d wait until, what? We were forty? Fifty?” Vehement. “When were you planning to retire, Jinyoungie? You love acting. You can act forever. It’s not like being an idol. There’s no deadline. Tell me you wouldn’t have wanted to keep acting.”

 

The breeze was a breath of frost at the back of his neck. In his hair. “It wouldn’t have mattered so much. Our lives would have been more private, we could have done it, it could have worked – ”

 

“Everything. Everything is ‘would have’, with you. ‘Could have’, with you. I want.” Jaebum stuck his cap back on his head. Sighed. He was tired, too. There was an age to his voice, an almost patronising tone that made Jinyoung’s hackles rise. “What’s wrong with being happy now? What’s wrong with wanting that?”

 

“It’s not realistic!”

 

But Jaebum wasn’t shouting anymore. His gaze was distant. A stranger’s. A tourist, looking through the glass at an alien species. “Maybe for you it isn’t.”

 

If Jinyoung had felt humiliated before, now, he just felt small. He couldn’t look at Jaebum anymore. He looked at the tiles instead. Their slippered feet. Matching crosshatch slippers. Bambam had bought them as a joke. Couple slippers, he called them. Jaebum, still seething from Jinyoung’s decision, had almost bitten his head off.

 

So, Jinyoung wanted to say. He makes you happy.

 

So, he makes you a better person.

 

So, he’s the reason you’ve accepted yourself.

 

What he said was worse. “You love him.”

 

“Jinyoungie. You really have a one-track mind.”

 

The leaves of the trees below them rustled. When he was six years old, Jinyoung’s parents had taken him to the seaside for the first time. His sisters were teenagers by then. Spent all their time on their phones, and would only build sandcastles and look for seashells with him, when he pleaded, and their mother threatened. _Appa_ hadn’t gotten involved, of course. That wasn’t what men did.

 

Jinyoung had been six years old at the time. There were lots of pictures of him doing things that kids his age did at the beach. There was the compulsory sandcastle, completed under corvée labour, or in other words, his sisters. There was the bucket of seashells, and the banana boat turning over a mile or so from the shore, and the clams steaming in rows on the grill.

 

But the thing that Jinyoung remembered most clearly was this: the sound of the sea breeze, rushing towards him across an empty, open sky. That sound had been exactly like this: like a thousand shaken leaves.

 

The second time he’d remembered something as starkly as he’d remembered that moment, he’d been seventeen. It was his first time on stage.

 

The third time, he’d been twenty-one. It was dark. He was scared. Confessing a thing to his best friend that he’d never admitted to anyone, not even himself. Mark had taken his hand, and held on tight.

 

The fourth time, he’d understood that he was in love.

 

Jinyoung hadn’t lied when he said, he was glad for Jaebum. Glad that he was happy. He was. How could he not be?

 

He’d just been angry too. Because, he’d believed something that turned out not to be true. Because, to be betrayed by your own expectations, your own quiet truths, hurt.

 

Perhaps, a good person could have accepted this gracefully.

 

His silence was irritating Jaebum. Making him uncomfortable. “What are you even thinking about?”

 

He pushed himself off the railing. Brushed past his friend.

 

“Yah.” A hand caught his shoulder. Warm, too intimate. “Yah, Park Jinyoung.”

 

Jinyoung was not good.

 

He shook the hand off. And turned.

 

There was stubble on Jaebum’s jaw. The shape of it was exactly as he’d imagined, but the angle was sharper, the skin softer. Of course, he thought somewhere in the functioning part of his mind. What he imagined was air, a figment, and this was real.

 

It wasn’t his first kiss.

 

He kissed people on camera all the time. The first time he accidentally touched Jaebum’s mouth, the shock had been like electricity up his spine.

 

But like this, still like this, he could feel Jaebum inhale, the slick of his lip balm, the bitterness of something like five cups of coffee. Like this, Jaebum’s hand came up to grip his wrist, the other the back of his neck, tilting Jinyoung’s head the right way, and crushing their lips together. His tongue, hot and wet, licked into Jinyoung’s mouth.

 

Jinyoung shuddered. A spasm of ecstasy.

 

And then Jaebum pushed him away.

 

His saliva was cooling on Jinyoung’s lip.

 

“You,” Jaebum breathed. “You little shit.”

 

 

 

The AOMG headquarters was a pretty cool place. Lots of open spaces, no ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ rooms, or any of that shit. Jay liked to think he ran a lateral company, a group where people could just talk music, play music together. The physical area of the company should reflect that.

 

Still, it wasn’t like he was going to compose right out there with the coffee machine and that brat Zico on his Nintendo DS. There were some things you couldn’t do in groups. Like think. He’d made his own office, and stuck the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door for a reason.

 

Excuse him for being damn irritated when his secretary ignored it.

 

“ _Sajang_ -nim,” said Sunwoo. “There’s someone here to see you.”

 

His hook was still ringing in his ears, so it took him a moment to realise why Sunwoo’s voice was so weird. He sounded _polite_. Professional. There was no other word for it. Jay craned around him. “Did you bring him in already?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then why the heck are you – ”

 

Sunwoo squared his shoulders. “It’s Nichkhun-shi, _sajang-_ nim. From 2PM.”

 

“I know that,” he snapped. None of the higher functions of his brain were working. He scratched the back of his neck. “Did anyone see him come in?”

 

“He was disguised.”

 

“That’s not what I asked.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Sunwoo said, stiff. “I’m afraid I don’t know any more than that. We let him in as soon as he buzzed.”

 

Jay put his guitar down. Closed his fingers over the neck. Opened them. Closed.

 

“Should I send him away? He doesn’t have an appointment.”

 

“Obvi – ” He bit his tongue. Sunwoo hadn’t done anything to deserve his temper. “Bring him in here.”

 

“Here,” Sunwoo repeated. “There are meeting rooms available.”

 

“Here.”

 

Khun didn’t make much sound when he walked. A leftover from their variety days, when his role had been to be the cute, pure, little prince from Thailand. Jay couldn’t remember if he’d walked like that before. That was the funny thing about being an idol, he’d thought, back in Seattle. In the dry heat, lying on his back under a car, the metal of the spanner a brand against the palm of his hand.

 

It wasn’t so much that you became a different person, in front of the camera. It was more that you amplified a different part of yourself, a constructed part. And when the cameras turned off, it, blown out of its previous proportion, stayed.

 

Jay flicked through the pages on the stand, and pretended it wasn’t a black, spindly shield between him and the past.

 

“Good evening.” He spoke formally, but he didn’t call him ‘hyung’, or ‘shi’. He didn’t call him anything.

 

He’d flicked through all the pages already. Sitting back on his stool, he made himself look Khun in the face. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t what he got.

 

Khun, he thought. Didn’t look that different in person than he did in his pictures. Except his face would never be that inanimate on screen.

 

“What’s up?”

 

If the informality grated, Khun didn’t show it. He shifted his gaze away from Jay instead, looked around them. The whitewashed, soundproof walls. The state-of-the-art equipment. Out the door, onto beige, carpeted floors and flowers arranged neatly in vases on corner tables. This place that Jay had made for himself, by himself.

 

Some of that fierce pride must have shown on Jay’s face, because when Khun looked back at him, and spoke, his voice was stilted. “This is nice.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

The air conditioner hissed into the quiet.

 

Jay remembered his manners. He pointed at the stool behind Khun. “Sit if you want.”

 

Khun turned his face to the side. Away from him. Jay didn’t have a clue what he was looking at. When he looked back, his features were collected into a polite mask. “It’s easy to find this place.” He was speaking in English.

 

They used to speak in English, back then. When things were hard. When there were things they just couldn’t say, with the handful of Korean words that they had.

 

They used to.

 

How the fuck was Jay supposed to know what it meant, now?

 

“’Course,” he said. Switching too. “It’s an office. Look it up on Google, dude.”

 

Khun didn’t crack a smile.

 

The set of his features. Hard. None of them had changed so much, after all. At least, he still knew when Khun was fucking pissed. “Was this where you guys met, then? Did Taecyeon just Google you, and said, hey, let’s meet up and maybe fuck later? You fucking bastards.”

 

Jay’s mind was empty. Iced over. His jaw had dropped.

 

Khun turned on the spot, that stupid little twirl he did when he didn’t know what to feel. “Oh my god. It’s true. It’s true. The two of you – ”

 

“Who told you?” he demanded. “Taecyeon?”

 

“You’re seeing each other. You’re _fucking_. Are you fucking?”

 

He was thirty-four years old. He should not feel so bloody humiliated. “It’s none of your business. Who told you?”

 

“You are. You’re fucking. Oh, god.”

 

“You’re such a baby, Khun,” he snapped.

 

Murderous. “Says the person who’s been sneaking around behind our backs.”

 

He was on his feet. The stool shifted. The guitar he’d propped up against it, thudded onto the floor. Simon was going to kill him, for not treating his instruments right. Fuck that. Fuck everything. “I don’t owe you an explanation. I don’t have to tell you shit.”

 

Khun’s eyes narrowed. “You are,” he said. “You’re still angry with us. You just can’t let it go, can you? Even though it was your fault.”

 

He hadn’t meant to laugh. But the look on Khun’s face made it feel like a victory, anyway. “Hypocrite.”

 

“Hypocrite,” Khun repeated. Snarled. “You’re the one who’s screwing around. What did you tell him, then? Oh, wait, was it Taecyeon? Did he say he was sorry? Did he say he wanted to forget all of this and be friends again? Did he say _he_ was fucking sorry?”

 

It was like a bucket of water in his face.

 

Zico banging on the guitar strings; death by sound.

 

Maybe Khun felt it too.

 

The quiet of the room, the deep calm of high-end soundproofing, was like cotton in Jay’s ears. Khun coughed. Stuck his hands in the pockets of his tight, stylish jeans. Said to Jay’s guitar laid out on the floor: “You should have told us.”

 

To Khun’s leather shoes. “We’re not friends. If you’re looking for somebody to chew out, go chew out your groupmate.”

 

“He’s gone AWOL.” Careless. “You were the next best thing.”

 

That is so like you, you reckless brat. He almost said. But didn’t. They weren’t friends.

 

Abruptly, Khun grabbed the stool that Jay had pointed out to him earlier, parked himself on it. Widened his eyes, as if challenging Jay to say something. Hey, sitting was better than standing any day.

 

They sat.

 

“I don’t get it,” Jay said. He couldn’t stand it. “Why the fuck did he tell you? I’m going to kill him.”

 

Khun shrugged. Said, softer than the first time, properly sullen, “You guys should have told us.”

 

Jay never knew what to do when Khun got sad. In the past, he’d just chucked a pillow at him. Blanked out his ugly face. He couldn’t do that now. “Like I said. Not my job.”

 

He reached for his phone. It’d been on silent before. There were maybe a dozen texts. All from Taecyeon. The first said: they know.

 

Yeah, he fucking knew he knew.

 

“Hey,” he said, tucking the phone back into his pocket. “Does everyone know?”

 

Khun hunched.

 

Yeah, he’d thought not.

 

Wooyoung would never have let it get to Jay’s office.

 

“You going to tell them?”

 

“I don’t know,” Khun said. He picked at the leather of the stool. “What is there to tell?”

 

He frowned. “What does that mean?”

 

“I mean.” He looked up. “What is this? Are you guys just screwing around, or what?”

 

Jay’s mind was blank for a moment. His voice was equally blank. It was either that, or get mad again. “I don’t get you lot, anymore. What about me says I like screwing around? Huh? Is it the tattoos, you snobby shits.”

 

“Taecyeon,” Khun said. “He asked me if I thought you were still angry with us.”

 

“And,” he kept his tone even. “He can’t ask me that to my fucking face?”

 

Raised hands. “Don’t drag me into your mess.”

 

“You dragged yourself in.”

 

Khun pursed his lips. “So, what? You guys are serious? Then you should’ve known that Taecyeon was going to tell us sooner or later.”

 

“Maybe he didn’t,” Jay said. “Because he knew you’d react the way you did.”

 

“Or,” Khun said. “He didn’t, because he knew you’d react the way _you_ did.”

 

Jay wished he’d been practising the drums. Then, he could have thrown his sticks at Khun’s face. As it was, he grabbed the sheets he’d been working on, and chucked those instead. They fluttered to the floor between them.

 

Useless.

 

“You should have told us,” said Khun. A broken recorder.

 

“Yeah,” Jay said. “Then maybe you should be asking why I didn’t.”

 

Plainly. “We aren’t friends. You said.”

 

“I did.”

 

The papers blew out the doorway. Fucking air-conditioner. He hadn’t even numbered them yet.

 

“I don’t know,” Khun said. “Maybe that was the wrong question.”

 

“Was that supposed to be deep?”

 

Khun looked the same as his pictures, Jay’d thought when he walked in. Nothing new there. Nothing to notice. Except, now, Jay realised that he hadn’t been comparing Khun to his pictures. He’d been comparing him to his memories of him. Old and unused. The childish wrinkling of his face. The pouting mouth. The petty anger.

 

He realised this, because now that they were just sitting and looking at each other, kind of civilly, it struck him how different Khun was. He was thirty-three now. His face was more defined. The eyes not so large and innocent-like. The hairstyle, more grown-up.

 

Khun’s gaze kept straying to his tattoos. It was the first time he was seeing them live. At the AOMG party, Jay’d been wearing a tasteful, conveniently long-sleeved suit.

 

Jay stuck his arm out in front of his face, all the better to let him look.

 

“No,” said Khun. Looking caught out. “You wouldn’t get it if it was deep, anyway, Jay Park.” Thai princes did disdainful so well. “I was just saying, maybe we’re asking the wrong questions.”

 

“That doesn’t clear things up at all.”

 

He lifted a shoulder. “You guys got us into this mess. You guys figure it out. I’ll give you a day’s headstart, and then I’m telling 2PM.”

 

Jay could feel his forehead crumpling. “I don’t care.”

 

Khun stood up. Straightened his designer shirt. Jay bit back his desire to tell him that he looked really stupid wearing something that embroidered. Khun would just laugh at him and ask him what had happened to his brain, had he left it in Seattle, what kind of insult was that.

 

“You don’t care,” said his ex-groupmate, ex-friend. “But Taecyeon does.”

 

And just like that, Jay was left with a dozen un-numbered sheets to pick up. And a stool with the leather picked clean in one spot.


	6. Chapter 6

Jaebum’s bedroom faced the front gate. He’d kept the blinds down most of the day, so it was by pure luck that, thinking he’d just check if the crowd had really been dispersed, he twitched two of the slats apart, and saw the headlights sliding down the driveway and into the empty street. Mark’s BMW.

 

That BMW was the most obviously expensive thing Mark had ever bought. Bambam and Yugyeom questioned him endlessly about it, until he’d broke down and mumbled that he hadn’t been alone when he bought it. That, of course, made Bambam demand to know who could have forced Mark-hyung to do something he wasn’t naturally inclined to do. Which Mark, like he usually did, shut down.

 

Looking back, Jaebum wondered if it’d really been that ordinary a move.

 

Ordinarily, Mark was pretty good about the ribbing.

 

They weren’t supposed to be going out at all.

 

Jaebum let the slats spring back into place. Fell back into bed. A tinny version of Justin Timberlake’s voice issued from his abandoned headphones. The house seemed to have fallen into a dead silence.

 

Nobody’d bothered him since the – thing on the balcony that morning. When his stomach drove him out into the living room, he’d found a plate of ddukboki sitting under a mesh cover. When he came out again for dinner, the empty plate was gone, and a bowl of instant ramyeon was in its place.

 

Whoever’d made it, Jinyoung must have had a hand in it. Because the noodles were melted together in a way he would’ve thought was impossible.

 

Thinking about Jinyoung right now shouldn’t make him smile.

 

Thinking – the memory of his mouth, the warmth and wetness of it, the heat and solidity of his body against Jaebum’s – it was less a memory, and more a sensation. Immediate. Terrfying.

 

Jaebum sat up. He was half-hard. Fuck.

 

Fuck Jinyoung.

 

He jammed his headphones back on, and switched to the angriest song he could think of. Jerked his head in time to the rhythm, let cold rage douse desire. Fuck Jinyoung, and his rules, and his reason, and his fucking, cheating, lying –

 

Jaebum had kissed him back.

 

Four years ago, on that balcony in their old apartment, Jinyoung had explained his rules, and his reasons, and asked Jaebum, “Hyung, do you agree?”

 

And Jaebum had said yes.

 

It wasn’t Jinyoung’s fault, was it, that he’d agreed. That he’d understood. That he hadn’t wanted to risk it, either.

 

They should have risked it.

 

The bitterness rose like smoke in his chest. Suffocating. He tore off the headphones, rubbed at his nose. Looked at the posters on the walls. Justin Timberlake, Usher, Musiq Soulchild. After that passive-aggressive, public spat at the New York fanmeeting, Jinyoung had helped them move house. Peeled tape off boxes, broke up Yugyeom’s and Youngjae’s fight over rooms, come and stood at the door to Jaebum’s room, looking in.

 

“Aren’t you going to help,” Jaebum asked him then. An olive branch.

 

There had been a moment, when he was sure that his friend’s spitefulness was going to emerge, drive him back out into the fray. And then Jinyoung’s cold face cracked into a smile, and he’d grabbed a roll of tape, and helped Jaebum paste his posters up in such a way that none of them was actually straight.

 

A year ago.

 

A year ago, things were still fine.

 

That future that Jinyoung confessed to him, voice more choked than he probably realised himself; Jaebum still hoped it would come true.

 

At the same time. Maybe, a year ago, he’d started to think it wouldn’t.

 

“Why,” he remembered asking, when Jinyoung first told them he wouldn’t be living with them. He’d known the answer, of course. They all knew the answer. Jinyoung talked about it enough.

 

He supposed it’d just been one of those things he refused to think about. Hadn’t thought it would be a big deal, until it was.

 

When there weren’t a lot of things you could have, being in a relationship that was not a relationship, that had been mutually agreed to not _be_ a relationship – trivial, obvious things were magnified.

 

On some level, even then, Jaebum had understood why he was upset. He and Jinyoung would probably never live together. Not until they were both old. Retired. This, the group under one roof, was the closest he’d felt he would ever come to it.

 

And Jinyoung had looked at him so uncertainly. He hadn’t understood at all. “Hyung,” he’d said. “I have to have a place for my parents to stay when they’re visiting. You know that.”

 

If they weren’t even going to try their hardest to keep what they could have, Jaebum thought then. Then what were they doing, at all?

 

 _Look at me_ , crooned Mulan into Jaebum’s ears. He threw an arm over his eyes. Fuck Youngjae and his stupid pranks. Reaching out, he hit pause on his laptop.

 

Silence.

 

On Jinyoung’s twenty-third birthday, four years ago, Jaebum rewrote the lyrics to ‘Hooked’ a second time. After the surprise party that wasn’t really a surprise, not anymore, and the copious drinking – Bambam and Yugyeom were of age, after all – he’d dragged Jinyoung out onto the balcony, just the two of them, and sang the song for him.

 

Jinyoung’s face was flushed from the soju. The way he bobbed his head in time to the rhythm, the uncontrollable, soundless laughing; it should have made it an annoying moment. He’d spent ages on that song.

 

But seeing Jinyoung happy like that – it opened something in Jaebum’s heart. Something he hadn’t known was there.

 

“I love you,” he’d said.

 

The words drew Jinyoung up short. He’d hiccuped a few times, looked at Jaebum in that cross-eyed way that usually meant he was going to be sick. And then, soberly, more sadly than he should have been capable of at that moment – Jinyoung wasn’t a sad drunk – he said, “I know. I love you, too. But we can’t.”

 

It was all so civil.

 

So amicable.

 

Jaebum went to sleep in the room he shared with Youngjae that night, and listened to Youngjae hum drunkenly to the tune of their newest single, and he hadn’t felt hurt. Or angry. Or anything, really.

 

It wasn’t that Jinyoung didn’t feel the same way.

 

It was just that, it wasn’t realistic. It wasn’t doable.

 

That was okay, wasn’t it?

 

Nothing would have changed if they dated, anyway. As Jinyoung had pointed out. They spent so much time in the spotlight, and were they going to tell the rest of the group they were gay? Neither of them thought that was a good plan, back then.

 

In the world they lived in, all bright spotlights and sexual appeal and romance, the definition of a man was a lot more black-and-white than it might have been in any other scenario. Their groupmates, whatever their private feelings about that matter, would feel the need to prove their masculinity with a keenness that Jaebum and Jinyoung understood, because they shared it.

 

If they dated, it would only be a matter of time before they were caught.

 

Better to avoid potential trouble, and just keep on as they were.

 

What was the difference between what they had now, and what they would have had in a relationship? Just the sex.

 

Jinyoung explained all of this to him, articulate even when drunk, and Jaebum agreed.

 

He didn’t think Jinyoung was wrong, even now. He felt an attraction towards Jinyoung like a vibrating string, breathless with anticipation, suspended in time and space. But it wasn’t as if he’d fallen in love with Jinyoung for his looks alone.

 

The thing that went wrong – he wanted to say it was that moment, when Jinyoung decided not to move in with them. It would have been easy. It would have made it Jinyoung’s fault, more than his. For not being more sensitive. For not understanding. For acting like Jaebum waiting for him, that was just his due.

 

But if he was honest, if he really thought about it, made no excuses, pointed no fingers, then Jaebum would have to say that things went wrong a lot earlier.

 

The day Jinyoung told them his decision, Jaebum had asked him, “Why?”

 

His friend had looked at him, confused, and instead of explaining calmly, rationally, what he was feeling, Jaebum exploded.

 

He’d shouted.

 

For months afterwards, he’d sniped about it. Snarked about it. Commented on it on TV, his smile like a stretched rubber band on his mouth.

 

The night after New York, the seven of them squeezed into Jackson’s and Mark’s hotel room, Jinyoung had shouted, asked him what his problem was, finally, and even then, Jaebum hadn’t told him. Because, by then, Jinyoung not understanding wasn’t just an irritant. It was a source of satisfaction.

 

No. Whatever it was that had gone wrong.

 

It was both of their faults.

 

Someone tried his door. Then banged on it. Jackson. Voice deep and frustrated. “Hey. Leader. Mark and Jinyoung are missing.”

 

Jinyoung?

 

He rolled off his bed, opened the door. Bambam was outside, too. He wouldn’t look Jaebum in the eye. “His car?”

 

Jackson raised his eyebrows. “Mark took his car, yeah. Jinyoungie’s is still here.”

 

“So what? They went together?”

 

“How would I know? They aren’t answering their phones.”

 

“Fuck.” Jaebum gripped the edge of the door. It was better than kicking something.

 

“The crowd’s gone,” said Jackson. “So I’m not that worried. About Mark, anyway. There’s another problem.”

 

Bambam’s shoulders hunched. Jackson smacked him. “Show him.”

 

A phone was stuck in his face. The newest Samsung model, of course. If there was anything Bambam loved more than clothes, it was a high-tech phone.

 

The headline jumped out in big, bold characters. It looked professional. It was professional. A bona fide news site.

 

“The fans are saying that Jinyoung’s gay too,” said Jackson. “They are saying he was the guy you kissed.”

 

 

They didn’t meet up outside. It wasn’t something they discussed; just something that seemed kinda obvious. HOTTESTs had done crazier things in the past than stalking, and what Jay’s calmer fans didn’t stoop to, the paps were more than willing to do for them. Rather than get asked a million questions about what 2PM’s Taecyeon and Jay Park were doing being chummy again, and then the thornier questions about why the one could be seen leaving the other’s apartment in the wee hours of morning, they’d just kept it on the down low. Taecyeon arrived and left in a car with tinted windows, and they hung out in the plenty big space of Jay’s apartment, playing on Jay’s PS3, teaming up on Starcraft, and after the kiss happened, fucking.

 

It’d been obvious to Jay. But kicking off his sneakers and catching Taecyeon’s shadow through the translucent screen that divided the kitchen from the living room, he was struck by how normal a scene it was. Fucking ordinary.

 

He had to wonder, why had they never thought to just make their reconciliation public? Then, at least, it wouldn’t have been weird to be seen together. People would’ve gotten used to it, then forgotten about and squealed about some other celebrity scandal instead.

 

He had to wonder, if Taecyeon had really never thought it. Or if he’d just never brought it up.

 

Because, the thing was, Khun was right. Maybe Jay had forgotten. Maybe he’d been wilfully obtuse about it. But there was a time when it would’ve been difficult for him to keep anything from 2PM either.

 

Seoul’d been a lonely place, in his trainee days. He might have been too grateful for a readymade group of friends.

 

It annoyed him, thinking like this. He was supposed to be mad at Taecyeon. He had a fucking right to be. So, what if it’d been hard to keep a secret from 2PM? It wasn’t like it’d been easy for Jay, fending off Simon D’s clumsy-as-hell attempts to find out what girl he was screwing on such a regular basis. It wasn’t like he couldn’t have talked about it with Jay, if he was really that desperate.

 

He was supposed to be mad, but he poked his head into the kitchen and there Taecyeon was. Beast idol, 190-centimetre tree whose abs were plastered all over the Internet and probably millions of twenty-somethings’ wet dreams; face squashed into Jay’s expensive marble-topped counter, drooling.

 

Jay pulled himself up onto the high stool next to his, stared down at that ugly mug. Had the weird urge to kiss him on the cheek. That warm surge of feeling was what broke his equally weird reverie. He smacked Taecyeon up the head instead. “Hey.”

 

The way that Taecyeon jerked awake, and blinked blearily into the distance, should definitely never be seen on any variety show. Except, maybe, Wild Bunnies.

 

“What,” he whined in Korean, wiping the drool off on the back of his hand. Jay chucked the box of tissues at him. Yuck. “What the fuck – ” And then he seemed to register that it was Jay he was talking to. And he was awake. “Dude, did you even get my texts, seriously, I almost went to AOMG – ”

 

“Yeah, well.” He tried to be angry. It came out more resigned. “Khun did that for you, so maybe it was for the best.”

 

Taecyeon’s mouth opened. “Khun, what? Jay, I’m so sorry – it just came out – ”

 

Okay, so he was angry. Just less about that than he’d thought.

 

Khun had said they were asking the wrong questions.

 

What the fuck were the right ones?

 

“That’s not how the Thai prince told it. He said, you were asking him something. About me. About whether I was still angry with you guys. First I’ve heard of it it.”

 

Taecyeon looked torn between murdering Khun, and hanging his head in shame. His gaze was fixed on the tissues instead of Jay. Whatever he saw there, whatever the fuck he could’ve seen on the green-patterned side of a paper box, it made him blurt out something that was rather less apologetic than Jay thought the situation demanded. It was downright mutinous. “Aren’t you, though?”

 

“Yah,” he said. “If you’ve got a problem, say it to my face. Or are you a coward?”

 

Taecyeon got up. His back to Jay. Water gushed from the tap. Taecyeon always washed his hands the way you were supposed to. Lathered with soap, then rinsed, with special attention to the thumbs, because people always forgot about them. He’d tried to teach Jay to wash them that way, when they first became friends. Back when Jay knew little enough about him that he’d thought Taecyeon was just a pernickety dude. 

 

People weren’t that simple.

 

The tap twisted off. A sudden silence. Taecyeon turned to look at him. Sitting, he towered over Jay. Standing, he was a fucking cellphone tower. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For telling Khun. It wasn’t fair. I’ll talk to him, make sure he doesn’t tell the others.”

 

End of story. Except, it wasn’t. And Jay resented Taecyeon making it out to be that way.

 

“You told him for a reason,” he said. “I want to know why. I want to know why,” he almost banged his fist on the table. Settled for touching his knuckles to the marble instead. Light. Unthreatening. “I’m not screwing around, Taecyeon. I’m in this for the long haul. Are you? Because, if you aren’t – ”

 

“I am.” Taecyeon rubbed at his eyes. “It’s just. It’s hard.”

 

“What’s hard?” It came out harsher than it was meant to. Taecyeon didn’t flinch. Didn’t get angry. Like he’d expected it.

 

“Why did you ask me about JB?”

 

Jay drew his hand over his scalp. He was smiling. “It’s hot news, man. What, we can’t talk about stuff now? You’re too sensitive about it? Because, that’s what you do, right, Taec, if you don’t like something, you just shove it under the carpet.”

 

He didn’t like being the only one getting mad.

 

It made him feel out of control.

 

“You’re right,” Taecyeon said. “That’s what we did with you, Jay. And you haven’t forgiven us.”

 

“I’m not the bad guy here.”

 

“That’s not what I’m trying to say – ”

 

He kicked his stool back. Taecyeon might be taller than him, and just as muscular, but fuck if Jay was going to let him be the only one standing. It’d been a while since he was this much in Taecyeon’s space, and not looking for a fuck. Or to just sling an arm around him.

 

Why was everyone always trying to make them out to be something they weren’t?

 

Why was everyone always trying to make it so complicated?

 

“What about you?” he demanded. “Have you forgiven me? Sure, you hung me out to dry, you fucking bastards, but why did you do it? You don’t think I wonder about that? You don’t think I wonder, when did it change, when did it become _okay_ to just drop me like – ”

 

“It wasn’t okay.”

 

“Tell that to my non-existent contract.”

 

Under the white kitchen lights, Taecyeon’s eyes were dark. Jay’d thought it was ridiculous, the first time they met. Nobody that big or muscular or with that deep a voice, should have eyes like that. Or smile like that. Like a chipmunk.

 

Taecyeon was a bundle of contradictions. In that way, he was like Jay. Like Khun. Like everybody else in their group: hungry, ambitious beansprouts with too many insecurities to fit comfortably under one roof.

 

But where Jay seemed to have matured from the outside in as he grew older, in the way he spoke, the way he thought, and gradually, the way he dealt with his feelings; Taecyeon had matured from the inside out. Calm and clear about the way he felt, but confused about everyone else’s.

 

“I used to hate you.” Too frank. Even though Jay’d known that. Of course he’d known.

 

“Not at first.” What right did Taecyeon have, to sound that calm? “At first, I hated everyone else. JYP. Our fans. Myself. Why didn’t I stop you? Why didn’t I say, don’t go, or at least, you know, go to the airport with you? Why didn’t I call more often when you were in Seattle? Why didn’t I fight harder to keep your face on the album cover, or to get you back sooner?”

 

The kitchen tiles were cool under his socked feet.

 

“And then, you didn’t come back. You wouldn’t.” He folded his arms. Like he was angry. Or cold. “And we’d been cancelled on some programs, some shows, and there was all that hate mail, and the fans asking when you were going to come back – they sure turned fast – and then, it was like, what had you done to deserve any of it? We were at the top before you left. Finally. And then you – _you_ ruined it. So, yeah. At that point, I hated you. And when JYP asked us if we were okay with you not coming back, I said yes.”

 

“Yeah.” Jay’s throat was dry. When had they started speaking in English? “I think I fucking knew that part.”

 

“We did it all wrong,” said Taecyeon, as if he hadn’t spoken. “We shouldn’t have tried to pin it on you. It just made everyone hate us more. And when everyone hated us, I hated you more. I kept thinking, maybe if it wasn’t you, we could have stayed on the top. We could’ve been bigger. Better. Now that I think about it, of course, I was just kidding myself. No one stays on top forever. There’s nothing saying we would’ve been any different if what had happened, hadn’t. Or if you’d stayed.”

 

“So, what?” he asked. “You grew up? You decided, hey, Jay’s not the be-all, end-all, after all? If we hadn’t done what we did, nothing would’ve changed.”

 

“I just stopped blaming you.”

 

Jay hadn’t bought this place with anyone else in mind. When he’d bought it, brand new real estate in Gangnam, unfurnished, he’d been looking forward to decorating it himself. Simon D went shopping with him a couple of times, but the final, the only decision-maker was Jay. No ugly couches that his mother liked for their floral patterns, no uglier curtains that Jehan liked because he was blind, no hot pink sweatbands that his father actually left lying around where other people could see’em.

 

It’d been a dream of his ever since he’d been a trainee, especially tantalising in the days when the seven of them were cooped up together in that fire hazard of an apartment.

 

Jay had bought this place thinking only of himself, and his liking for hanging lamps, and this was why Taecyeon was always banging into everything, the oversized monkey.

 

Even just seeing his head level with the kitchen lights right now, Jay felt an urge to laugh that was just – not in sync with his urge also to choke something, preferably Taecyeon. It made him feel like he was standing on his head, or drunk.

 

“I missed you,” Taecyeon said. “I missed you, and I regretted – so much. There’s so much time to think.”

 

He was talking about his time in the military. Jay didn’t know how he even knew that.

 

“I wanted to stop regretting things. So,” he swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed. Jay had kissed that bulge before, countless times. He’d traced its movement with his tongue.

 

“I’m sorry, Jay. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it now. I’m sorry for what I did. I’m sorry I wasn’t more grown up about it. I’m sorry I didn’t have more balls. I’m sorry I wasn’t much of a friend.”

 

His hands were still crossed. So tightly it was more like he was hugging himself. “Do you think. Do you think you could forgive me?”

 

Taecyeon had asked him this before. Clearly, he hadn’t believed Jay’s answer. Maybe, that’d been the right attitude to take. Jay, the right answer already lodged in his throat, the answer he’d given before, easy, found that he couldn’t give it.

 

It was stuck.

 

The wrong questions, Khun had said.

 

But what could Jay do, if all along, he hadn’t had the right answers even to those?

 

“It wasn’t the same,” he said. His voice cracked. He breathed in. Out. He wasn’t going to stumble through this, trembling like a kitten. Like Taecyeon. “I was wrong, too. I know that. I ran away, and left you guys to sort my mess. But, you know what was different? You know what you had that I didn’t? You had each other, and I.”

 

Breathe. “I was alone.”

 

Taecyeon didn’t have the right to look like that. So unsurprised. His eyes weirdly shiny, fixed on Jay’s out of numbness more than intent, but unsurprised.

 

Jay’s eyes were dry. “After the news broke, and you guys all left me to figure shit out by myself. Back in Seattle. I mean, would it have hurt to call more often. When JYP pulled the rug out from under me. Afterwards. _Afterwards_. You acted like I didn’t exist!”

 

His voice echoed off the cabinets. The marble counter. The windows, black and cold.

 

“It’s not,” he rolled his shoulders. Tension was locking them up. “Like I didn’t adjust, or whatever the fuck. It’s not the end of the world, you know. I had friends. I made friends. I came back, and I made it on my own. Without you. Without JYP, fuck him. I said before, they, those people out there, they’re the one who’ve made it into this drama. My life’s not a fucking drama. I moved on, same as you. But I didn’t forget. I can’t. Who forgets something like that?”

 

Taecyeon blinked, hard. “Is. Is there anything I can do?”

 

Jay never knew what to do when people were sad. Not then, not now. “It’s not something you have to do anything about. If you ask me if I forgive you, then no, I don’t. Because, I don’t think you understand. I don’t think you really – get how it felt. So it kind of falls flat, you know? But if you ask me if it means I don’t – I don’t want to be with you or some shit like that, then that’s just not true. I do. They don’t have to be the same thing.”

 

Taecyeon didn’t cry like this. Quiet. Passive. He wiped his tears off on the back of his hand, pressed his fist to his mouth, as if to muffle himself. It wasn’t like he was making a sound, anyhow. He turned his face away.

 

Jay sat down again. He was so fucking tired.

 

When Taecyeon seemed to think he was collected enough, he said, “I don’t know if I can do that.”

 

His voice was so cold. “So, what. We’re breaking up.”

 

“No.” A pause. “I need to think. Can you give me some time?”

 

Light glinted off the steel of the tap, the basin, Taecyeon’s designer watch that someone, Khun probably, must have gotten him for his birthday. It wasn’t the kind of thing he would’ve picked up for himself. Before this, Jay had never thought to ask.

 

“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

 

“I’m going to go.”

 

“Sure.”

 

The door shut. That tinny set of notes when the lock clicked into place; automatic. Jay looked up at his hanging kitchen lights. The room was the right size again.

 

 

 

Jinyoung heard Mark leave by chance. He was squatting in the laundry room, digging for a T-shirt that Bambam admitted to borrowing under threat of death, and the front door had slammed. It had this distinctive, heavy sound – the security mechanism embedded into the oak.

 

Curious, a little angry that anybody was sneaking out like this, a little envious, he’d come out of the laundry room, T-shirt clutched in his hand, and opened the door to see the headlights of Mark’s car swinging to face the road. The gates meandering shut behind him.

 

The street was empty. The lights strung along the patch of front garden seemed to eye Jinyoung, yellow and insouciant. He had no wallet. No phone. Not even a jacket. But his slacks were fine, and if he’d been wearing the same shirt for two days, well. What was the T-shirt for? Most importantly, in seconds, the gate would be shut. He really didn’t want time to re-think this.

 

Tugging off his button-down, tossing it onto the long sofa on the ground-floor living room, he hurried out the closing gates. He could feel his own mad grin on his face.

 

He was in a residential neighbourhood. Nothing to see, once he’d shrugged on his T-shirt at a more casual pace. Houses sized for their owners’ wallets, perfectly spaced trees and lamps, what looked like the smooth top of a Jaguar, lit yellow by the glow of chandeliers from inside the house. Jinyoung remembered Mark’s BMW – how accepting everyone had been of something so blatantly uncharacteristic.

 

Jaebum had had a boyfriend, maybe for months, years. And Jinyoung had not known.

 

He’d always believed he knew Jaebum best. That they were as sincere with each other as they knew how to be. He didn’t think that was untrue, now. Just that, when people were made up of so many parts, what did that mean?

 

He didn’t want his friend to hate him.

 

So, why had he kissed him?

 

The night was cool. Cooler than dusk on the balcony, when the sun, skulking still behind skyscrapers and the polluted city air, had been a silent generator of heat. Jinyoung hugged his arms to himself, found his eyes drawn to the dark bulk of a house a few blocks down from his own. There was something about the place that was familiar to him. He frowned. Glanced down, at where the number plate should be. Not that he would know it –

 

The figure sitting on the grass opposite, branch-like legs stuck out in the street, was looking back at him. Raised a hand in greeting. Jinyoung squinted back, his mind slowly collecting the pieces. And then.

 

“Taecyeon-hyung,” he bowed his head. “Good evening.”

 

Of all his 2PM seniors, he knew Taecyeon the least well. He wasn’t around much when there wasn’t a comeback to train for, or record for. From what Wooyoung and Chansung said sometimes, Jinyoung had gotten the impression he ran his Okcat business from his room in the penthouse suite he shared with his parents.

 

“Jinyoung,” he said, just in case.

 

Taecyeon laughed. His voice sounded strangely wet. Did he have a cold? “I know that. I thought you would be holed up at home until this all blew over. Snuck out?”

 

Jinyoung’s silence prompted another laugh. Unlike Wooyoung, amiability seemed to be his default setting. “You’re a better liar than that, Jinyoung-ah.”

 

He would have asked how Taecyeon knew that, except that it was a common joke amongst the 2PM seniors. An inside thing with an edge that he didn’t quite understand.

 

When Taecyeon patted the ground next to him, Jinyoung sat.

 

“So,” said his senior. Coughed. Maybe he did have a cold. “What are you doing outside this old place?”

 

“Sorry?”

 

A wave. “Our old house. I’m surprised you found it. We moved out before you even debuted. Oh, wait. You live near here, don’t you? Chansungie said.”

 

“Not me,” he said. “But GOT7 does.”

 

Neither of them seemed to be particularly good conversationalists.

 

Jinyoung shifted into a more comfortable position. The grass was prickly. It dug into his thighs. “What are you doing here, hyung?”

 

“Me?” Taecyeon was still staring at the house. His fingers picked at the grass between them. “Feeling nostalgic, I guess. It’s nice to live with friends. You should enjoy it while you can.”

 

It would be pedantic to remind him that he didn’t, anymore.

 

“Appreciate what you have, be thankful, and work hard. That’s what they always tell us. What we always say. If that was what we really lived by – ” a shake of the head. Slow. Strangely wistful. “Sometimes, I think, if he’d come back earlier, you know?”

 

Jinyoung suspected that his not knowing was the point.

 

His heart ached, anyway.

 

“Before things got so messed up. I mean, the original event wasn’t that bad. Sure, the nation was up in arms, and he had to run all the way to Seattle, and we were pretty sure our days as a group were over for a while there, but. We were angrier at everyone else. Back then, it was still us against them. Like always. You know what I’m talking about?”

 

He clasped his hands together. They were cold. “Jay Park-sunbaenim.”

 

Taecyeon’s eyes shone under the stark, white lamplight from opposite. His teeth glinted. “You’re a smart kid.”

 

“No,” he said. “It’s just – lately, I’ve been thinking along the same lines.”

 

A nod. “Im Jaebum, right? Your leader. What’s been decided about that? Anything?”

 

Jinyoung looked down at his hands. When he’d kissed Jaebum, his friend had gripped his wrist. He imagined that he could still feel the warmth, the strength of those fingers against his skin.

 

Kissing Jaebum used to be a dream. When he’d finally done it, it’d felt like more of a last chance. An opportunity that, if missed, wouldn’t come again. Jinyoung had acted recklessly, as if he had nothing to lose. Why? The truth was, he knew.

 

In that moment, there had been something he couldn't bear to lose.

 

Maybe, when Jaebum had acted in that same unthinking manner, it’d been because he felt the same way.

 

He couldn’t tell any of this to Taecyeon. Instead, he asked, “Do you have any advice, hyung? On what to do.”

 

Taecyeon slid his hand over his face. Jinyoung wondered if he was tired, or laughing at him again. When he spoke, at least, he sounded amused.

 

“I don’t think I’m the right person to ask for advice on this, Jinyoungie.”

 

In the darkness behind them, a frog croaked. Jinyoung pressed his eyes into his clasped hands. Inhaled the smell of Yugyeom’s favourite soap, and that indefinable odour that was the living.

 

A hand pressed his shoulder. Fleeting warmth. “Just – don’t do something you’ll regret.”

 

Jinyoung considered this. A smile crept onto his lips. Involuntary. Helpless. “What if everything I could do, is something I’ll regret?”

 

Taecyeon wasn’t looking at him. He’d turned back to the house. The lines and angles of it, looming out of the shadows before them. What did he see, there in the dark? There wasn’t a clue in his flat voice.

 

“Flip a coin.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning for this chapter, for those who aren't already aware:
> 
> Jay Park's Korean name is Park Jaebum, and in the 2PM era of his career, Jaebum was how he was referred to both generally and by his group members, to my knowledge. In fact, his current colleagues at AOMG also refer to him by this name when speaking in Korean. 
> 
> (Thanks to BubblesofColours for drawing my attention to this.)

The lights in the house were blazing. Jinyoung squinted up at them, momentarily blinded. The gates were open. Was JYP here? Had Mark just returned? He ambled up the driveway to the front doors, which were open too, and came into the ground-floor living room. Strange. It seemed empty.

 

And then Jackson’s blond-topped figure stopped in the middle of prancing up the stairs, and peered down. He stuck his finger out. “Jinyoung! What the fuck.”

 

Upstairs, a door slammed. Yugyeom’s voice. “Jinyoung-hyung? I’ll call Bambam.”

 

Jaebum’s silhouette appeared at the banister. He took a few steps down. Stopped. From that distance, his face was unreadable. But he didn’t look angry. His shoulders weren’t squared. His jaw wasn’t sticking out. When he spoke, his voice carried down like the scent of mint leaves, cool and calm. “Where did you go?”

 

Jinyoung crossed the marble floor, paused at the bottom of the staircase. From here, he could hear Yugyeom saying, “He’s here, Bambam. Yeah, I know. I’m calling Youngjae now. Yeah, he knows.”

 

“Did you know,” Jackson said. “How worried we were? We aren’t supposed to going out, what the hell, and then this happens – ”

 

He placed his hand on the banister. The wood was slippery-smooth, not quite grounding. “Something happened.”

 

Jaebum turned his head. Looked out the enormous windows to his left. They’d delighted Youngjae, in the early days. He used to sit on the steps and compose, until he realised that nice and open as they were, they also let in way too much sun.

 

There was nothing to see out there right now. Except the reflection of the house’s lights onto the glass. How much electricity were they wasting?

 

How much silence had Jinyoung allowed his wondering thought process fill? Jackson was still looking at him, face frozen in indecisiveness. It was Jaebum who said, “There are reporters writing who think that you are the guy I kissed.”

 

Jinyoung heard himself swallow. It sounded to him like a cage snapping closed. His face felt suddenly hot. He stroked the banister. Focused on stroking it. And then he said, “I wanted to talk to you about this, anyway. When Bambam and Youngjae get home. Where’s Mark?”

 

The sound of feet. Yugyeom had finished. He flung his arms over the railing. His tone was terse. “You’d know better than us. He’s gone too. Took his car.”

 

“Does Mark need to be here?” Jackson asked.

 

He spoke so steadily. It made him proud of himself. It made him think of his parents, probably asleep in Busan. They’d been so anxious for him all day. No matter how he’d reassured them, told them he could handle this, they hadn’t seemed soothed. When his oldest sister had taken over the phone for a while after dinner, she’d said, “Of course, they’re worried, Jinyoung-ah. They are your parents. That doesn’t stop just because you are old enough to look after yourself. Don’t think too much, and sleep on time, okay?”

 

“Yeah,” Jinyoung said, in the same tone that his sister had used with him. “We all do.”

 

Bambam and Youngjae came back first. They’d been looking for him around the neighbourhood. Youngjae sighed when he saw him, hand over his chest, and then came to hug him. Bambam, who’d been strange ever since the swimming pool, looked like he was going to say something, something angry, but opted for sitting on the long sofa on the ground floor instead. Staring at the TV screen.

 

No one moved to turn it on.

 

When Mark returned, maybe half an hour later, the only sound in the living room was the ticking clock.

 

“Don’t ask,” he said. Before any of them had spoken. And then he shoved Jackson over, and sat on the arm of the sofa. Jinyoung, sitting on the armchair next to him, could smell the foreign scent on his clothes. A brand of cologne Mark didn’t use.

 

The ground floor of the house was an enormous place. Large enough to hold parties that Jackson and Bambam had been determined they would have, and at first, so shining and spotless that Jinyoung wasn’t sure what six boys were going to do with the place. He knew the answer to that now, obviously.

 

Opposite him, Yugyeom reached behind himself, for the third time in an hour, and dug out the second missing game console. He poked it at Bambam, who grabbed it and poked him back. Youngjae, unfortunate enough to be squashed between them, plucked the console out of their hands and dropped it into the basket next to the sofa. It was already overflowing with magazines and an empty crisp packet no one had bothered to throw away.

 

On the display shelves next to the TV – Jaebum had muttered about what they were going to use them for in the first place – GOT7’s awards were in a neat, polished row; and underneath that, an assortment of Star Wars models, a notebook Eminem had signed while on tour in Korea, a paperweight Yugyeom’s sister had given them as a housewarming gift, and stuffed into the corner, someone’s shirt.

 

Enjoy it while you can, Taecyeon had said.

 

Jinyoung felt a fondness, a nostalgic longing wash through him. Not bitter, never bitter. What was there to be bitter about?

 

If only they could have stayed this way.

 

“I think,” he said. “That if Jaebum-hyung wants to come out, we should support him.”

 

There was a collective, silent intake of breath. Only Mark didn’t look surprised. Slouched on the arm of the sofa, looking at his hand on his thigh.

 

Jackson spoke first. The undercurrent of anger lowered his voice, made it sound as if he were about to launch into a rap. “What brought this on?”

 

“Hyung,” Yugyeom said. “If Jaebum-hyung comes out, what happens to you? They think you’re the person he kissed! You’ll have to make a statement – lie, or something. Or are you going to come out too?”

 

Bambam and Youngjae had their heads in their hands.

 

He reached for Jackson’s hand. Held on even when Jackson tried to pull away. “I think one person coming out in GOT7 at a time is enough. As for what brought this on, nothing, really. I think, if this is something that Jaebum-hyung feels that he has to do, that he can’t not do, then I don’t want him to do it alone. What about the rest of you?”

 

Jackson’s shoulders were tense. But he let Jinyoung hold his hand. “What about what we want?”

 

“We’ve been acting as if we’re between a rock and a hard place. I’ve been thinking, maybe that isn’t strictly true. If Jaebum-hyung doesn’t make an official announcement through JYP Entertainment, but just on his own media, then even if it is kind of an official statement, JYP will have some room for manouevre. We can wait and see what the response is in Korea and internationally, and if Jaebum-hyung needs to take a step back for a while – we can do that.”

 

“That,” said Jackson. “Is just delaying the inevitable.”

 

“What,” said Youngjae, nervously. “What if Jinyoung-hyung – not you, hyung – makes Jaebum-hyung resign? Or fires him, for speaking without the company’s approval, or just, you know, later for whatever reason. What then?”

 

Jinyoung smiled at him. “We’ll deal with that when it comes. The point is that none of us, not Jaebum-hyung, not you, not Jackson nor anyone else, will be doing this alone. We’ll be in this together.”

 

Bambam’s voice was like a string pulled taut. “Was that guy alone? The one you told me about. That Kim Ji Hoo dude. He wasn’t alone. He had friends, and family, right?”

 

Jaebum sat very still. The others looked at each other, uncomprehending. Youngjae nudged Bambam in the shoulder. Mouthed, _what_.

 

“The gay guy who committed suicide.” It’d been a while since Bambam had tried, deliberately or undeliberately, to hit that high of a note. “He lost his contract and everything, and then he offed himself.”

 

“Don’t talk about the deceased that way,” Jackson snapped.

 

“Jaebum-hyung wouldn’t do that,” Youngjae said. “No way. He’s not weak like that.”

 

Bambam stared at him. “People don’t kill themselves because they’re _weak_.”

 

Terse. “How would you know?”

 

Jinyoung raised his voice. It was the only way to get them to listen. “We don’t know that Kim Ji Hoo had people who supported him. It was eight years ago. Not many people – understood back then. But we can understand, can’t we? All of us.”

 

Jaebum hadn’t spoken. Neither had Mark.

 

Jinyoung could hear the stress in his own voice. “As long as we’re in this together, we can figure it out. The best way forward for everyone.”

 

The ceiling fan rotated slowly above them. Jinyoung had been wary about it, at first. His parents had never let him sleep in a room with a working electric fan, unless there was a window open somewhere, and for a while, until the others insisted that there was really nothing to be afraid of, he’d banned anyone from sleeping in the living room at all. Just in case.

 

They’d indulged him for at least a month, anyway.

 

Jinyoung couldn’t lose them. Any one of them. His second family.

 

At last, Mark said, “I agree with Jinyoung. What about you?” He was looking at Jaebum. They all were.

 

Jaebum was sitting in the middle of the long sofa. Jackson on one side, Bambam and Youngjae on the other. His hands were clasped together over his legs; one of the more serious poses he had, which usually came out only in interviews, or when he and Jinyoung were discussing something on their own, in low voices in the half-dark.

 

For his twenty-third birthday, Jaebum had rewritten ‘Hooked’ for him.

 

Sometimes, Jinyoung wished he’d recorded it, so that Jinyoung could listen to it again without asking Jaebum to sing it for him. He remembered most of the lyrics, and of course, the general tune. But there were some phrases he’d dropped. Some things that were beyond memory.

 

Jaebum caught his gaze, held it. “What really brought this on?”

 

How stupid it was, to fixate on his lips right now. To watch them shape words, and feel an echo of their heat on Jinyoung’s own. Jaebum had tasted of coffee. His favourite drink was sikhye. If he’d kissed him at any other time, would he have tasted of that, instead? Would he have tasted different?

 

“Nothing, hyung.” He kept his voice gentle. “Just what I said. Just that, if there’s something you can’t lose, if that’s Takeshi – or your sense of who you are – then I don’t want you to lose it.”

 

When they were twenty-one years old, he’d asked Jaebum if he was happy.

 

It was a stupid question. He didn’t think he’d understood it, at the time. That there were different kinds of happiness, differently valued.

 

“So it’s not that bad?” Youngjae. “If Jaebum-hyung comes out, we won’t all die?”

 

Jackson let go of Jinyoung’s hand. “Don’t be stupid. Of course it’ll be bad.” A pause. “But maybe it doesn’t have to be that bad.”

 

“What does that _mean_?”

 

“He doesn’t know,” said Mark. “That’s what it means.”

 

Jinyoung expected Youngjae to freak out. He did. Getting up, and circling around behind Yugyeom’s armchair, pressing his shoulder against the wall and sinking to his haunches. Bambam and Yugyeom exchanged glances that were more like hammerblows, and descended into moody silence. And Jackson. Jinyoung had no idea what was going through his head. Or for that matter, what was going through Mark’s. Or even Jaebum’s.

 

He had nothing else to convince them with. He didn’t want to convince them. He’d just wanted them to see things in maybe a different light.

 

“Let’s vote,” he said. “Everyone, close your eyes. If you’ve raised your hand, then you agree to let Jaebum-hyung decide. If you haven’t, then.”

 

A bit of a scuffle. Mumbled curses. One by one, they lowered their heads, shut their eyes. Youngjae had risen to his feet. Jinyoung looked at their familiar faces, thought suddenly of Taecyeon’s unfamiliar one, washed out under the white streetlamps.

 

And then he closed his eyes too.

 

“One, two,” Deep breath. “Three.”

 

Had he told them the truth as he saw it, without embellishments, without making anything sound easier than it was?

 

Had he given them enough freedom of choice, or was voting like this too much pressure?

 

Was this the right thing, for all of them?

 

“Jinyoung,” said Mark. “You can look now.”

 

He squeezed his eyes tight. Mark’s hand on his shoulder was steady. It told him nothing.

 

If he could not face this reality, how could he ask the rest of them to face another? Slowly, he let himself look.

 

The six faces he’d come to know as well as his own looked back at him. Their hands were all raised.

 

 

 

As if in defiance of the breakup of the crowd in front of the GOT7 house, the protesters outside JYP Entertainment had doubled since the day before. Taecyeon caught sight of sleeping bags, deliverymen with their boxes of jjajangmyeon making their rounds, and stacks of signs, the dead eyes of people who had gone too long without sleep, and had to wonder at their tenacity. The depth of their disgust.

 

He remembered what it’d been like, the first time he came out of customs and found that hundreds of people were waiting to catch a glimpse of him, his groupmates. The rush of excitement, of pride, of gratitude. It was because of these people that he’d accomplished everything he had.

 

That gratitude hadn’t faded. It’d just become complicated.

 

In that way, he guessed that it was like his relationship with Jay.

 

He was the earliest this time. Once he’d warmed up, he turned the music up as loud as it could go, stormed through the routine over and over again, until there was nothing in his head but the lyrics, and the bass beat seemed to have fused with his soul.

 

The door opened a few times. The others, arriving in twos and threes. They looked at him funny, but didn’t jump him. Khun hadn’t opened his big mouth yet. Taecyeon didn’t kid himself that it would last long, and it didn’t.

 

The lights above cast fixed, irregular shadows on the pine flooring. His sweat dripped on the boards; his reflection in the full-length mirror glistened, half from the light, half from the damp. Khun finished his stretches, and then going to the back of the room, he turned off the music. The silence cracked across the room like a whip.

 

Khun’s reflection raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to tell them, or should I?”

 

“Tell us what,” Wooyoung asked, voice low. Speaking to Khun alone.

 

But Khun wasn’t that easily deterred. “You or me. Your choice.”

 

Taecyeon got to his feet. Wiped his sweat off on the back of his arm. His T-shirt was sticking to him. His legs felt like they were steaming in his pants. The others were watching him from the back of the room, stretches just done.

 

Rather than decide what honorific to use, he said in English, “I was dating Jay.”

 

It wasn’t like it was difficult vocabulary. They all got it in one. Minjun’s mouth fell open. Chansung squeaked, “What?”

 

Khun said, “ _Was_?”

 

“Wait a minute,” said Junho. “You knew about this, hyung?”

 

Wooyoung sounded like he was speaking from the back of his throat, so softly that Taecyeon read his lips as much as listened to the sounds leaving his mouth. “How long?”

 

“I went to see him a year ago. Dating, about six months.”

 

“But,” said Chansung. “You were just discharged a year ago.”

 

“ _Was_ ,” Khun demanded. “What happened? Did he dump you? That fucking bastard.”

 

“Why did you go and see Jaebum-hyung, I don’t get it.” Chansung looked at the space between his stretched legs, as if it would have a sensible answer. At least, _it_ hadn’t decided to become the ceiling. “And why did you go by your fucking self?”

 

The room was quiet for a moment. All of them absorbing the sentiment that their youngest had just voiced, out loud.

 

Abruptly, Chansung scrambled to his feet. Left the door open behind him.

 

“Good going,” said Minjun. “Really great job, Taecyeon. Chansung-ah, wait.”

 

No one spoke. Keenly aware of the door.

 

Wooyoung, with a cutting sharpness that was the only outward sign of his anger, went to shut it.

 

“I don’t get it,” said Junho. “You haven’t said anything. You didn’t say anything. If you were going to go see him, why didn’t you tell us? I don’t get it. And you’re dating him.” He sunk onto the floor, back to the wall. Gaze sour. “What the hell is that about?”

 

Khun didn’t do well with being ignored. He pushed his face into Taecyeon’s space. “Did you guys _break up_?”

 

He pushed Khun out of the way. Turned, and leaned his head against the mirror. It was blessedly cool. He shut his eyes.

 

“Hey, I’m talking to you – ”

 

“No,” he said. Turning around again. “We didn’t break up. Yet. And it wasn’t about you finding out. It was just. Other things.”

 

“The timing is way too convenient for that.”

 

“Yah!” Junho’s eyes were wide. His jaw like rock. “Are you going to explain this, or am I a wall, or what?”

 

Wooyoung was silent. Leaning against the table with the laptop on it, arms folded.

 

Taecyeon couldn’t look at either of them. “I didn’t think you guys wanted to see him.”

 

“Why would we? Yah,” Junho smacked the floor with the palm of his hand. “We don’t even talk about him. We aren’t fucking friends, anymore. What were you thinking – ”

 

“I know,” he said. Harsher than he’d meant to. “We aren’t friends. I know. So why do you care?”

 

“Why I – it’s Jay Park.” No honorific. “We’re us. He screwed us over. He – ”

 

“We screwed each other over. Tell me that’s not true.”

 

“I’m not,” Junho breathed in, sharp. “I don’t have to explain this to you.”

 

Khun had gone quiet. Shifting from foot to foot, uneasy.

 

Good, Taecyeon thought savagely. He’d started this. He’d started this, and what was the point?

 

“You know what,” he said. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. You’re right. He sees things the same way. It was a bloody stupid thing to do.”

 

And then grabbing his water bottle, he headed for the door.

 

Wooyoung was faster than him. He slammed his hand in front of Taecyeon. From up close, Taecyeon could see the tells in his face, clear as day. The working of the muscles in his jaw. “He thinks we screwed him over.”

 

“We did, didn’t we?”

 

“He’s still mad.”

 

Taecyeon had spent a night turning this over and over again in his head. He’d had enough. “Yeah, he is. Get out of my way.”

 

Khun was on the floor now too. Crouched there, hands covering his face.

 

“Let him,” Junho muttered. “Let him be mad. See if I care.”

 

He laughed. He had to, or he might shout instead. Or punch someone. They were all too old for punching. They weren’t on TV. “This is why I didn’t tell you. You want to know why, right? This, this right here.”

 

“When the fuck did _you_ switch teams.”

 

“Junho,” said Wooyoung. “Shut up.”

 

“I don’t get it.” Khun. His voice was steadily rising in volume. “You broke up. What the fuck?”

 

Taecyeon turned on him. It wasn’t like Wooyoung was going to let him out. It wasn’t like it’d had any impact in the end, it hadn’t been what Jay was angry about in the first place – no, that was something Taecyeon had had equal blame in. But it was tiring, blaming yourself. Taecyeon was older, now. He knew his mistakes, now. It didn’t mean he’d learned from them.

 

“And you,” he said. Khun, sensing his approach, got to his feet. Only to be pushed back a couple of steps. Taecyeon moved to shove him again, Wooyoung grabbed his arm, he shook Wooyoung off, and Khun, instead of passively standing there, pushed him back. “You, why the fuck did you go to his office?”

 

Junho’s breath was expelled from him. “You, what?”

 

“I didn’t say anything.” Khun’s pitch climbed when he was on the defensive. “We talked, that’s it. He wasn’t even that mad! How was I supposed to know – ”

 

He thought he might die from the humiliation. Or explode. “He didn’t break up with me, you idiot! I’m breaking up with him.”

 

It was Chansung who spoke. At some point, he and Minjun had reappeared at the door. “Why the fuck are you doing that?”

 

The waterbottle was cool against Taecyeon’s forehead. “None of your business. Okay. None of this is any of your business.”

 

“Yeah. You’ve only been sleeping with the enemy.”

 

Minjun groaned. “Come on, Junho. That’s not even how you think about him anymore.”

 

“I can think about him however the hell – ”

 

Khun. “If that’s how you think, then you’re even dumber than I – ”

 

“You can say his _name_.” Chansung. Taecyeon wondered what he’d been doing outside. He didn’t look any different. Just sullen. Angry. Like the rest of them. Hurt.

 

“You know what I don’t understand,” said Wooyoung. “Why you didn’t tell us. It’s none of our business, anyway. Right. So, what does it matter what we think.”

 

The sweat was turning cold on his skin. There was a single window in the practice room, squeezed into the corner, where this part of the building jutted out from the building next to it. It was soundproofed, of course, so they couldn’t hear the protest outside. All that Taecyeon could see was sky. A limpid day.

 

“Have you guys,” he said. “Really not forgiven Jaebum-hyung?”

 

His heart was in his throat, for the second time in two days. He wanted to go home, and just sleep.

 

Wooyoung clapped him around the neck, left his hand there. A warm weight. His head was bowed. At last, he said, “It’s hard to, when he’s not around.”

 

“Whose fault is that?”

 

“Everyone’s,” said Minjun. Pointed.

 

Taecyeon struggled not to be angry. “What if he was around, then?”

 

“What,” Junho asked. Askance. “You want us to storm AOMG or something?”

 

“He invited us to his party,” said Minjun.

 

“Yeah, and said hello, goodbye, drink whatever you can lay your hands on.”

 

“I stormed in,” said Khun.

 

“Yeah,” said Wooyoung. “You did.”

 

Khun shrank back.

 

Chansung, pretty composed since he and Minjun came back into the room, had some of that original hysteria creeping into his voice. “If it was that easy, then why haven’t we already fucking done it. Fuck.”

 

“What kind of question is that.” Junho. Flat. As tired as Taecyeon felt. “Everything fucking else.”

 

Taecyeon left Wooyoung and Khun to face off in the middle of the room. Sat down with his back to the mirror, and closed his eyes. He really didn’t want to do this right now. He wasn’t even sure what they were doing.

 

It wasn’t his fight, anymore.

 

When he’d first learned to sing, this gangly teenager with too many teeth and no idea how to even breathe right when he rapped, Jang-seonsaeng-nim had told him, “Close your eyes.”

 

They were sitting in a room like this one, because Jang-saeng liked the acoustics better. Just the two of them – the space had seemed monstrous. Hollow. Taecyeon was too used, by then, to squeezing himself into things, not having them spread out before him.

 

“Close your eyes,” Jang-saeng had said. “Listen.”

 

It wasn’t so much that the sounds became clearer. Just that they came to the forefront of his mind.

 

Junho’s fingers tapping on his thigh. The squeak of shoes on the floorboards. Restless. Probably Khun, then. As he sank deeper into his new awareness – their breathing. Rhythmic. Discordant, at the same time. The longer they were quiet, the more their paces matched. Coming into sync.

 

“Yah,” Wooyoung said.

 

Instinctively – the kind that was born out of years and years of habit, backstage amidst a throng of scurrying, shouting strangers – Taecyeon opened his eyes.

 

Wooyoung’s hands were on his hips. His T-shirt had a hole in the armpit. The waistband of his sweatpants, faded. He didn’t look any different today than in the past eleven years.

 

None of them did, really.

 

But Taecyeon knew, even if it was only by the logic of time, that they were changed.

 

“Let’s go,” said Wooyoung. “Let’s go see Jaebum-hyung.”

 

“Yeah,” Khun said. “Then maybe he can tell us why he and Taecyeon aren’t screwing each other anymore.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two warnings/reminders: Mark's Chinese name is Yi En. Jay's Korean name is Jaebum. They will at times be referred to by these names by certain people in this chapter.

No one actually spent much time in the garden. Six boys with packed schedules and Macbook Airs – what did a patch of grass have to offer them that they couldn’t get playing DOTA and watching reality TV shows? Mark doubted that had changed since he moved out a month ago. So, colour him surprised when he looked out the next morning, crusty-eyed and scratching just inside the waistband of Jackson’s spare, _washed_ sleep pants – he’d been too busy last night to remember clothes – and saw Bambam and Youngjae stretched out on the grass.

 

He opened the door. Walked out to the steps leading down into the garden, and sat, looking at them. “Did somebody die?’

 

Youngjae yawned, turned over. Bambam squinted up at him. “We were cooped up in there for two days. Give us a break.”

 

“You could have come out here yesterday, too.”

 

“And listen to that crowd? No, thanks.”

 

It was nine in the morning. Mark had ambled out of his room to find Jinyoung and Jaebum in Jaebum’s room, the door open, heads together over a laptop; the sound of sizzling in the kitchen and the smell of eggs; and out here, two idiots lolling in the grass.

 

Like any other day, except since when did Jinyoung wake up earlier than Mark, since when did Jackson and Yugyeom join forces to make breakfast without being threatened within an inch of their lives, since when did any of them like nature?

 

The air wasn’t tense, exactly. Just uneasy.

 

“What’s Jinyoungie and Jaebummie doing?”

 

“The Facebook post,” Youngjae said to the empty flowerbed to his right. None of them had the time or inclination to garden. “We’re all supposed to read it when they’re done.”

 

Mark hadn’t imagined the discomfort.

 

Bambam rolled over onto his elbows. Looked at Mark for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure what to say. “Did,” slowly. “Jinyoung-hyung come to ask you yet, if you’ve changed your mind?”

 

He shook his head. “I haven’t, though.”

 

Neither Bambam nor Youngjae offered their own answers. It was obvious, anyway. They wouldn’t be lying out here otherwise, waiting for Jinyoung and Jaebum to finish wording their fates.

 

That didn’t stop Bambam for picking at the grass. Tearing it out in clumps. He didn’t even try to throw some at Youngjae’s head. “Hyung,” he said. “Jinyoung-hyung’s seen the articles, right? The ones they wrote about him. And the videos, and stuff.”

 

A night was a long time, no matter when it was that Jinyoung had finally stopped pretending to be asleep and gone to look for Jaebum.

 

“Yeah, probably.”

 

Youngjae started to hum something really familiar. Mark recognised the opening bars to the JJ Project song, ‘Hooked’. He wondered if Youngjae was even fully aware what he was doing. Or, if he and Bambam and Yugyeom had spent so much time trawling through the fan theories, the more respectable paparazzi collections of evidence, and the brief note in the _Gook-Min Ilbo_ – if they had spent so much time on that that the song had stuck in the unconscious part of Youngjae’s mind.

 

“They think everything is evidence,” said Bambam. “Like, you remember Sukira? The kissing game? There are so many GIFs of that now that I thought I was going to be sick if I had to look at Jaebum-hyung’s teeth up close, another two hundred times. And someone’s made a compilation of all the times they held hands! What kind of proof is that? Jinyoung-hyung holds all our hands.”

 

Mark waited for him to get to the point.

 

More calmly. “Is Jinyoung-hyung really going to be able to hide the fact that he’s gay?”

 

“Jinyoung’s never done anything to suggest otherwise.”

 

Youngjae had stopped humming. He turned over, looked at Mark. “What about you?”

 

The brick steps were warm beneath him. Heated by the morning sun. A breeze wound its way through his thin T-shirt, his hair, unstyled and flat on one side.

 

The coolness, the fleetingness of the touch, reminded him of Han.

 

Han, who greeted him like an old friend, toeing his shoes off in Mark’s entranceway – bag still over his shoulder, eyes bloodshot, a ton of product in his hair, which Mark had never seen in its natural colour – and crossing the room to bump fists with him, draw him into a one-armed hug. Before running his fingers through Mark’s hair, and kissing him slow, and hard.

 

Mark had only ever felt this mixture of calm and agitation around one person. His hands had come up to grip the back of Han’s neck, force his head into a more accessible angle, ruin his coiffed hair, slippery smooth to the touch.

 

“I kind of think,” said Han. Lips so close that Mark imagined he could feel the shape of the Mandarin characters on his own mouth. “We should be talking. Or some shit.” His fingers were tracing circles over Mark’s collarbone, dipping below his shirt.

 

“You never say anything useful, anyway.”

 

So they’d fucked first. Maybe it wasn’t the grown-up way to do things. But Mark’d never claimed to be grown up. Sometimes, he didn’t think he’d changed much from that seventeen-year old who couldn’t find the right practice room, his first day.

 

Afterwards, Han pressed his nose into Mark’s neck, inhaled. His breathing was still messed up. Neither of them had bothered to switch on the lights, when they tumbled into the bedroom. Looking up at the ceiling, it could have been any other night, any other quiet hour before sleep came. Except that he could feel Han’s breath slow, then even out against his skin; the muscles in his back flex under his hand.

 

“Did you,” he said. “Ever think it was like, evil, or something. To be gay.”

 

Han lifted his head. Mark sensed his gaze on his face. “Yeah. All the time. People always say I look like a girl. I don’t care so much now. But back in EXO, I used to want to kill them, or myself. Either. Did you?”

 

He smiled. Traced the line of Han’s jaw. “Yeah. Things were better though, I think. In LA. I mean, I didn’t come out. But there were people like me, in school and shit. On shows and movies, and stuff. It made it better.”

 

His boyfriend took his hand, intertwined their fingers. They were both still hot and sticky, and it wasn’t that comfortable, but Mark held on tighter than he needed to.

 

“What, you think Im Jaebum should come out?”

 

Their eyes had adjusted to the dark. He could make out the lines of Han’s face. The tilt downwards of his mouth, when he was uncertain, or disapproving. Reaching out, he switched on the bedroom lamp. Let its glow wash over the sheets, set the highlights in Han’s hair ablaze, paint his skin gold, light the emotion in his eyes.

 

“Yi En-ah – ”

 

“I just think,” said Mark. “He’s got a point. If there was someone out there who could’ve told you, just like they told me that it was okay, that we were just fine the way we were, then he would’ve done something really important. Even if he didn’t do anything else.”

 

Han’s grip was just as tight as his own. “Other people will get hurt.” You will. I will.

 

“I know.”

 

The curtains were drawn tight. They hadn’t had time to turn on the lights, but even on the thirty-third floor, they’d made sure to blind the windows first. Mark said once in an interview that he wanted to go sky-diving before he died. Because, his sister had told him, the world changed when you saw it from up high. When there was nothing between you and it, except air.

 

“As long as you do.” His boyfriend let his hand go, collapsed onto the pillow next to his own. “I haven’t slept for over forty-eight hours, and planes don’t count, I’m not going to move, god.”

 

Mark still wanted to go sky-diving. But he’d seen the world change in a lot of different ways since then.

 

One of those times, he’d figured out how Han said, I love you.

 

“If that happens,” he said to Bambam. “Then it’s simple. I just won’t hide, anymore.”

 

He hadn’t noticed before, that the windows to Jaebum’s room were open. The blinds up, letting in the morning breeze. The windows being open; that was probably why they could all hear the shout, piercing, harsh; unmistakeably their leader. And then, the door banging shut. 

 

 

 

Jay glared at his phone. He was sitting in his kitchen, eating a bowl of damn-good _doenjang jjigae_ , and he couldn’t stop getting dumb texts. Seriously. Simon D was always asking him why he couldn’t not put the thing on silent. This was why.

 

Zico, that fucking kid. Who wanted to know what his Warcraft Four score was.

 

And then Simon had had the fucking balls to ask him, just that afternoon, “Why the heck is your phone on vibrate mode, anyway?” Dot, dot, dot, went his empty head. “Wait, is this about the girl you’ve been fucking? Did you fuck up? Why am I not surprised, what did you do, forget your month-aversary or some shit, _Jaebum-ah_.”

 

A month-aversary. If he didn’t know what that was, Taecyeon sure as hell didn’t, either.

 

At seven o’clock on a summer evening, Jay could look out the row of windows opposite, and see the first droplets of rain plastering themselves to the glass.

 

If he was going to be this irritated, he might as well have stayed in the office and worked on that hook. The song was coming out a lot angrier than it was supposed to have been. Simon had taken one listen, then ripped of his headphones, and said, “Go home.”

 

Well, what the fuck did Simon know? Maybe it was better, angry.

 

There. He bopped his head in time to the last arrangement he’d been working on. It was damn catchy. He tapped his spoon against the rim of his bowl, in time to the beat. So lost in it that he didn’t hear the doorbell ring.

 

People didn’t really ring his doorbell, anyway. Taecyeon had just come in, after Jay chucked a copy of the keys at him. And Simon and Zico usually called ahead. Jay was more used to hearing doorbells in his sleep, than in real life.

 

It rang again. Pealing sweet and soft through the apartment. At discordance with Jay’s drumming spoon. He frowned. Cocked his head.

 

And then there was a shrill, staccato racket, as someone decided to stop ringing and just bang on the switch again and again. It cut off as abruptly as it’d started.

 

Jay jumped off his stool. There was a monitor next to the door. His fingers hovered over the keys for a moment, dredging up the instruction manual and the real-time demonstration he’d been given when he moved in. And then, five faces were peering up into the camera.

 

It wasn’t his proudest moment. That girly yelp.

 

“Oh, look,” said Chansung. “I think he can see us.”

 

Wooyoung shoved him. “Why the hell do we all act like country bumpkins.”

 

Khun elbowed them both out of the way. “Hey, uh. You.”

 

“You,” Chansung repeated.

 

“If we start calling him hyung,” Minjun hissed. “He’ll freak out.”

 

Jay had had enough. He pressed the intercom button. “What the fuck – ”

 

Junho, who had at some point, wandered out of sight of the camera, returned, a handful of familiar hoodie in his fist. Together with Wooyoung, they wrestled Taecyeon into the screen. “Say something,” Minjun said. “So he doesn’t think that we’re stalkers.”

 

“I didn’t – ” Taecyeon looked, at last, up into the camera. Said, in English, awkward and hesitant. “Hey, Jay.” And then perhaps realising that no one other than Khun was going to understand him, in Korean: “I can explain. If you could just, uh, let us in.”

 

Jay almost snapped that he had a fucking key, didn’t he. And then imagined the lot of them clattering into his kitchen where he had been innocently – fuck that, _normally_ – eating his _doenjang jjigae_. Instead of answering, he turned off the visual feed. Sharply, as if he could have keyed them out of existence, too.

 

The black screen stared back at him.

 

He lowered his head. Forced himself to breathe.

 

Taecyeon had said he could explain, had he? Well, then. He could fucking explain.

 

Jay opened the door. It was weirdly anti-climactic. These people he hadn’t seen in the flesh in, what, eight years, stood squashed together in his porch, out of the slowly harshening rain, and stared at him. They didn’t clatter in, like they owned the place. They didn’t kowtow. They didn’t even smile, and say hello. They just gaped at him like stuck pigs. Fuck.

 

Taecyeon was skulking off to the side. The coward. Jay shouldered past Chansung, and grabbed him by the collar. “You. Now.”

 

At least, no one tried to ask him if they could come in.

 

They trickled into Jay’s living room, their shoes a heap on the porch, carrying bottles of soju, and Jay half-dragged, half-shoved Taecyeon into his bedroom. Shut the door. And locked it. He wasn’t sure why. They defnitely weren’t going to screw, or shit. Just that hearing the click gave him some kind of shallow satisfaction. 

 

Taecyeon winced.

 

“What,” Jay tried. At a loss, he always spoke in English. “Soju – them – ”

 

“Junho. He thought it’d be better if we all got drunk. It was just an idea – ”

 

“What are they doing here?”

 

“Khun and Junho wanted to go to AOMG, but Wooyoung thought that you’d be working, so – ”

 

“You were gonna break up with me, not bring over the in-laws!”

 

The rain was coming down hard now. It drummed against the windows like chopsticks on champagne flutes, blotted the light.

 

“I was going to call,” said Taecyeon. Hollow. “But this isn’t about that. They wanted to see you.”

 

Jay kicked the bed. He was in his house slippers. It hurt him more than it hurt the bed. He pressed his lips together. Diplomatically, Taecyeon said nothing. They hadn’t been diplomatic with each other since they’d first fucked. “They wanted to see me. All of a sudden. After eight years.”

 

“Khun told them about us.”

 

He’d watched a fishmonger scale a fish before. The man’s knife had flicked over silver skin the way stones might skip over water, until the blade slipped in his damp fingers, sunk into flesh. Jay’s voice sounded like that, just now. “Us, what?”

 

Taecyeon hated it when people told him this. But when he bared his teeth like that, he looked like a shark. “You said they were different things. You a liar now, Jay?”

 

“They are _in my living room_. And don’t you fucking change the subject. You wanted to think. Okay. You’ve thought. Us, what?”

 

Beanstalk fingers clenched.

 

Taecyeon said, “Let’s not talk about this now.”

 

Jay’s throat hurt. He wasn’t a crier. Hadn’t cried back when the news first broke, hadn’t cried in his room on his own, hadn’t cried on the plane, hadn’t cried when he walked out the terminal doors, and found himself on American soil again just weeks after he’d wrapped up individuala activities and left it. The salty, cool air of Seattle in his lungs. A stretch and volume of ocean he’d forgotten could exist, when he looked out the window of his parents’ car. If he cried after, well. Wailing in private didn’t count.

 

“I don’t get it,” he said. Because, that, he could say. “I still don’t get what they are doing here. What do they want?”

 

It wasn’t fair, that Taecyeon could smile. “What do they always want? To play.”

 

“Okay,” said Wooyoung. Jamming the bottle down in the centre of the circle. Chansung, their resident black hole, wasn’t even hiccuping. Just using Jay’s bottle opener, which they’d asked for politely, as if they were aliens and not the brats he used to wrestle into submission, to twist the cap off a second bottle. Which Chansung would probably swallow all by himself in one gulp, like an elephant. “Never have I ever.”

 

Jay, sitting on his sofa between Junho and Minjun, or more accurately, between space-Junho, space-Minjun, who were both squashed up against the arms, couldn’t find it in himself to even groan. Junho and Khun were reacting enough for all of them, anyhow. Chansung had stopped with the cap long enough to demand, “If we were going to play that, then why did I have to – ”

 

“It’s only fair, Chansungie. No one wants you to be sober when the rest of us are off our faces.”

 

“But – ”

 

“Never,” said Wooyoung. “Have I ever wanted to suck Jaebum-hyung’s face.”

 

What was worse? The humiliation, or the fact that Wooyoung had called him, hyung? At least, if he was humiliated, then Taecyeon was trying to crawl away from the circle and maybe smother himself with a cushion.

 

Khun pulled him back by his belt loops. Took his empty glass from him. “No, you have to tell us about it first.”

 

“Fuck that,” said Jay. It was the first thing he’d said, since he and Taecyeon came out of his bedroom. The frisson his voice caused was like electricity in the air. Junho and Minjun exchanged glances over his head.

 

But Wooyoung, whose poker face hadn’t changed over a decade, just said, “Go on.”

 

Chansung, fingers still wrapped around the neck of the second bottle, had tensed. Khun and Jay drew breath at the same time.  

 

But Taecyeon got there first. “It was in December. Or something. We weren’t drunk, but – ” Taecyeon didn’t call him by his name in Korean unless they were fucking. And they certainly didn’t talk about it, after. What else, Jay wondered, had they not done that he hadn’t noticed? “ – hyung was talking about – something. And I kissed him.”

 

Junho said, “That is really boring.”

 

Taecyeon took the bottle from Chansung, and drank straight. The kid – thirty years old now – wrinkled his nose. “Hyung, yuck.”

 

He got it shoved back in his face. “You should’ve poured then, brat.”

 

Jay felt like somebody’d blown up a balloon inside his lungs. Sucking out all the air, pressing it up against his ribcage.

 

Next to him, Junho shifted. Sensitive. “Never have I ever wanted to get a tattoo.”

 

“Goody-two-shoes,” muttered Khun. He knocked back a glass. Everyone else did, too.

 

“Yeah,” said Minjun. “But Jaebum-hyung’s the only one who’s done it.”

 

It just made it worse, when they stuttered over the name like that. Fuck. They were better liars than that.

 

His turn. Jay glared down at his empty glass. This game sucked. Never have I ever, fuck that. There were lots of things right now, that he _wanted_ to do. Like kick them out. Like demand that Taecyeon talk about this, and not hide behind his friends and weird reconciliation scenarios that were about eleven years too late. Like make Chansung stop refilling Jay’s glass in that weirdly careful way of his, like he wasn’t a 184 centimetres-tall giant with rock-hard muscles and a tendency to punch people as if he believed he was wearing kid gloves.

 

When he spoke, his voice was more even than he’d thought he’d manage. “Never have I ever sang on stage in a dress.”

 

“Aish.” Minjun mimed hitting him. Not actually hitting him. The space between his fist and Jay’s shoulder seemed to grow tentacles.

 

Khun, more naturally, flipped him the finger.

 

Everyone except Jay drank.

 

It wasn’t a fair fight. Jay would’ve sworn on somebody’s grave – not his grandmother’s – that it wasn’t. Sure, they were idols, and being idols meant they had done a shitload of things no self-respecting singer would do. But Jay was Jay, and he’d been an idol for at least two years, and anyway, _no one_ had a fair chance against Chansung.

 

So, if – _if_ he was one of the first ones to get drunk off his ass, it was not his fault.

 

He could have – he could have drunk them all under the table. Except, maybe Chansungie.

 

Junho giggled at him. “Look at Jaebummie-hyung. Look, I bet he’s not even thinking straight.” He hiccuped after that, hypocritical bastard.

 

Jay frowned. He didn’t think he’d used that word right: hypocritical. Fuck it. “Never have I ever – ”

 

Chansung said, “It’s not your turn – ”

 

Wooyoung, or someone, slapped their baby – well, not his baby, he was too young – up the head. Waved a dismissive hand.

 

“Never have I ever,” Jay said. “Wanted to fuck Taecyeon.”

 

“Hyung.” Chansung. Too fucking sober. “It’s supposed to be things you haven’t done.”

 

“Never have I ever. Wanted to sock all of you guys in the face.”

 

Minjun, who had graduated from the sofa to the floor, his head in Chansung’s lap, picked up the bottle nearest to him, and drank from it. It was empty. Jay wasn’t sure what that meant. Had Minjun wanted them to sock them all too? Or was he making some kind of artsy-fartsy statement?

 

Jay buried his head in his hands. He was a bitter drunk. He was a bitter drunk, or maybe he was just plain bitter. “Never have I ever,” he said. “Missed you.”

 

Something thudded. Taecyeon, fist sinking into the soft, squishy seat of the armchair on his way up, out. The door to the bedroom slammed shut. Khun, face mashed into Wooyoung’s thigh, sobbed. The sound grated on Jay’s ears. Khun didn’t cry. He didn’t cry, and Jay didn’t cry, so what the fuck was Jay supposed to do now?

 

He felt too cold to cry.

 

Wooyoung was the only person with a glass that had anything still in it. He raised it up high, a toast. When he knocked it back, he was looking straight at Jay.  

 

The bedroom was quiet. Dark. Rain thrummed on the windows, furious, merciless. The lump under the covers reminded Jay of waking Jehan up for school on grey mornings, pulling Simon D out of bed feet first the day after his album dropped, stubbing his toe on the bedframe when he was trying not to disturb Taecyeon so early that it wasn’t even late, anymore.

 

He sat down next to the bed. Sometime in the fourth round, the summer sun had bled into night. The lights were off. Lightning struck. Striped Jay’s hands white. And then they were plunged into darkness, again.

 

“Hey,” he said. To the shadow of the bathroom door. “Thanks.”

 

Taecyeon’s voice was muffled. Slobbering all over Jay’s pillows, the disgusting shit. “What for?”

 

The night Taecyeon’d stood on Jay’s doorstep, with his splinted fingers and stupid, tense smile, it was raining. Just like this. Other than that, Jay could have cut the date off the calendar, cut off all the dates, messed them around and threw them up into the air, and when it all came down again, he wouldn’t have been able to pick it out. It wouldn’t have been extraordinary.

 

“Thanks,” he said. “For turning up.”

 

The blankets shifted. Taecyeon’s fingers pressed warm, and gentle on the back of his neck. He spoke clearly, this time. “Thanks to you, too.”

 

Jay snorted. “What for?”

 

“For everything.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm posting the last two chapters together, since the epilogue is really short. Thank you to all the readers who commented. Being a reader myself, I know how it can sometimes feel like a chore to comment, even if you really liked the story, so it meant a lot to me that you took the time to tell me what you thought. I hope that you enjoy the ending!

“You know,” said Jaebum. “That what they really agreed to do was to support me, not – the rest of it, right?”

 

Jinyoung tapped the ‘delete’ key on Jaebum’s laptop a few times, rewrote the same phrase in different words. Reached up with a finger, and scratched lightly at a piece of dirt that had been masquerading as a comma. Jaebum suppressed a wince. He didn’t often see his screen like this, in the merciless light of the sun. It wasn’t often that he raised the blinds in his room, much less sat outside.

 

But today, because Jinyoung, jittery from nerves or lack of sleep, had made him, the windows were wide open. Sun flooded the space; washed out the posters on the walls, pooled over the tousled blankets, edged his friend’s lashes in gold.

 

The first time Jaebum woke next to Takeshi, it had been a day like this. Cloudless. He’d gone to the window, looked out. What had been on his mind; he didn’t remember.

 

Jinyoung had a two-day shadow on his jaw. His T-shirt was wrinkled, and when Jaebum leaned too close, he could smell the dried sweat from a night of tossing and turning on the sofa downstairs. The rigid set to his shoulders, tense from – something. It could have been so many things. And Jinyoung wouldn’t tell him what it was, not until he was forced to. None of this was endearing.

 

But Jaebum found himself thinking instead about the line of that pale neck, the black, almost pupil-less eyes, the deliberately factual tone in which he spoke, trying to keep his own twitchy frustration at bay. “I know. So do they.”

 

Jaebum had never lied to himself, particularly, about his feelings for Jinyoung. Not even with Takeshi. He wasn’t about to start, now.

 

It didn’t make it any less wrong.

 

So, when Jinyoung caught his gaze, and Jaebum saw the understanding, the recognition collecting in those eyes like rainwater in sunken earth, he turned away. Looked at the screen instead.

 

“Do you,” Jinyoung’s fingers jumped on the keys. Restless. “Ever wonder what we could have done differently?”

 

Jaebum thought about it carefully. He owed it to the both of them. “There were a lot of things,” he said. At last. “There were a lot of points where we could have said, or done something different. But I don’t know that we would have. I think, at some point, we stopped talking to each other. As much as we used to. That was the problem.”

 

This seemed to darken Jinyoung’s mood. His lip twisted. “Bambam said the same thing, you know. He said that there were things we didn’t say to each other.”

 

Jaebum laughed. “Bambam did? Wow, they grow up fast, don’t they.”

 

Jinyoung didn’t smile. He tapped the cursor down a few lines, changed another phrase. And then turned the laptop in Jaebum’s direction. “I think it’s good to go. We should let the others have a look.”

 

They’d been sitting at Jaebum’s desk. Jaebum in his desk chair, Jinyoung in the chair he’d borrowed from Jackson’s room, its actual owner like a leaf in the wind. Nowhere to be found. Later that morning, when sunlight was just beginning to filter through Jaebum’s still-closed blinds, Yugyeom had appeared at the door, spatula in hand, and informed them that Jackson’s many attempts to make egg rolls had ended in cold, sticky failure, and that since they didn’t have any more eggs, they would just have to eat rice.

 

They had all had the night to think. To reconsider, in the calm of their own minds, whether this was they really wanted to do. No one had backed out, yet.

 

Jaebum didn’t know how to feel about that.

 

He didn’t know how to thank them, for a gift that he – couldn’t even describe.

 

How did you thank someone for a gift like that?

 

Whether it was this, or his own observation that struck at him, made him grab his friend’s hand, he didn’t know. “Hey,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

 

They’d been sitting right next to each other. But it was only now that he realised how cold Jinyoung’s hand was. Before it was yanked out of his grasp.

 

He remembered that coldness. That clammy stickiness. Perhaps the memory would have come to him more slowly, a sensation piecing itself together at the back of his mind. Perhaps he would have had time to absorb it, to measure his own reaction. Except the way that Jinyoung ducked his head, breathed in sharply, sparked his visual recognition, too.

 

Of being backstage, eyes darkened with mascara and dazzling with glitter, wearing strange clothes and sporting weirder hairstyles; just the two of them. That was the most jarring thing about it, now. Just the two of them in a crowd, putting their hands together like their seniors had taught them, and counting one, two, three. Jjang.

 

Of sitting on the black leather sofa in their new apartment, facing a wall of cameras, surrounded by new groupmates, whose feelings of anticipation, of fear, were less complicated. Who could not understand. His and Jinyoung’s hands had clasped for a moment, then. And Jaebum had felt that at least, for a little while, he could mourn something old.

 

Of Jinyoung, right before he kissed him.

 

Jaebum’s voice was terse. It shouldn’t be terse. “Do you want to do this. Honestly.”

 

If he was incensed, Jinyoung was incredulous. “You’re asking me that now. Of course not. None of us wants to do this. It’s the best thing we can do.”

 

“You’re scared.”

 

“Everyone is.”

 

He touched his hand to the edge of the desk. Forced himself to be calm. The rounded steel edge was like ice, cooled by the morning air. “If you don’t want to do this.”

 

People looked at Jinyoung and thought that his temper was something rare and harmless. Like ripping the wrapper off a sweet. Jinyoung could be misleading that way. He angered sharp and dangerous; his grudges wound underground, emerging at the most unexpected times.

 

“You know,” Jinyoung said. “That’s not even the problem. That’s not even the most ironic thing. Who cares if I want to do this, or not? You know what my problem is?”

 

They were so close that their knees were almost touching.

 

“If I was going to be forced to come out,” said Jinyoung. “If they were going to bring me into this, comb through everything, speculate about everything, then why didn’t I sleep with you in the first place? At least, it would be worth it.”

 

The amazement came first. At the ease and accuracy of Jinyoung’s aim. At the depth to which he could cut. Jaebum’s hand rested on the desk. It was warming to his touch. This irritated him. This frustrated the fuck out of him. When he slammed his fist into the surface, it hurt.

 

“If you were going,” said Jaebum. Calmly, even though he had lost that fight. “To scare like this. At the slightest thing. Then, why – ” He shook his head. “You know what. You’re priceless. Fucking priceless.”

 

“I’m not scaring.” Hands folded in his lap. Like a gentleman. Like a fucking princess. That was how Jinyoung liked the world to see him.

 

It must hurt, he thought acidly. To have it run away with its own theories.

 

“Yeah, right. Let’s stop.”

 

A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Don’t be stupid, hyung.”

 

“I’m not being stupid. We’re not doing anything you can’t handle.”

 

He’d launched them into a game of chicken. Screw that. Jinyoung had. He was just taking it to its natural conclusion. He wondered then why it felt like he was stepping on the accelerator, except on a car that ran on rails, and not its own wheels. Curving down, to what?

 

Jinyoung bit his lip. He wanted to curse, Jaebum could see it in his face. Jinyoung was easy to read like that. He wasn’t a gentleman. He wasn’t a mystery. He was just a _child_ who changed his _mind_ at the slightest whim.

 

Jaebum had the distinct feeling that he was losing control.

 

“I was just lashing out,” said Jinyoung. Even. “I’m sorry. That’s going to happen once in a while. This is hard. I didn’t lie about that. Can we just forget I said anything?”

 

Jaebum had the distinct feeling that he was losing the higher ground, here.

 

“Let’s stop.”

 

Jinyoung’s face smoothed when he was livid. Became a mask. He stood up. His knees knocked against Jaebum’s. His hand gripped the back of his chair. And then, as abruptly as he’d gotten up, he sat back down. If he was breathing, Jaebum couldn’t see it. “Hyung,” he said. “I said I was sorry.”

 

Jaebum had the distinct feeling that he had lost all reason.

 

It didn’t sound that fucking unreasonable to him, though, when he said, “Let’s just fucking stop.”

 

And then, because he didn’t know what else to do, he retreated into the habits of his youth and, snapping his head away from Jinyoung’s provocative face, bellowed into the sunlight. Wordless.

 

Behind him, the door slammed shut.

 

He shut his eyes. Breathed. The harshening sunlight was warm on his face. When he was calm again, he keyed in his password. The screen lit up; the network of grime and fingerprints starkly visible. He hadn’t typed Jinyoung’s name into Google since the person in question had turned up in their living room, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

 

In the hours when he and Mark were gone, and no one had known where – Jaebum had thought about a lot of things.

 

He’d just forgotten them, for a while.

 

When his door opened, he didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.

 

“We’re not doing it,” he said.

 

Mark’s voice sounded as flat as his own. But Jaebum knew better than to think it was because he felt that way. “What the fuck.”

 

“Jinyoung’s not ready.”

 

“And you’re an arrogant bastard.”

 

He shut the laptop. Looked at Mark. He was alone. Where were the others? Hiding? “Did he come out, or did I out him?”

 

“We both know the answer to that.”

 

“Did he say he was gay, or did he just agree that he was ‘like me’?”

 

Mark’s jaw locked. “This better have a point, Jaebum. Or I’ll rip your patronising tongue out of your mouth.”

 

“What you did,” said Jaebum. “It was probably the happiest moment in my life. I’ll only say that once, because. What all of you did, no one’s ever done that for me, before. Maybe this doesn’t seem like that. Maybe I am being a patronising little shit. But.”

 

He hadn’t been certain up till then.

 

He hadn’t understood himself up till then.

 

But as he said it, he heard the finality in his own voice. This, for better or worse, was his decision. “I want to do what’s right for you guys, too.”

 

It wasn’t quiet, outside. Footsteps ringing on the stairs, Jackson’s heavy knock on another door, Yugyeom’s voice. Bambam’s raised in volume, then yanked down. Youngjae whimpering. Mark’s mouth was tight.

 

Jaebum wasn’t Jinyoung. He wasn’t eloquent. He didn’t know what to say. For interviews, he memorised the packets and recited them in monotone. He thought slowly, and the others learned to wait for him. He closed off, and they let him. They were all friends with Mark, weren’t they.

 

Jaebum had nothing else to say, so he looked at Mark, and willed him to understand.

 

“Okay,” said his friend. “Sure. I mean, it’s your decision. We all agreed on that. But.” His eyes were shuttered. “That doesn’t have to be the end.”

 

The place was a disaster.

 

Jay stared at the pool of sick next to Minjun’s head, and tried to care. He would, when his brain stopped ghosting him, and his gut stopped twerking. Somebody’d turned the bastard on his side, at least. Probably the angel who’d put a glass of water into his hand.

 

And then Chansung peered into his eyes, and said, “Hyung, are you even alive?” And Jay realised that angels didn’t exist.

 

He pushed the big-nosed idiot away from him. “You come that close to my face again,” he said. “I’ll sock you.”

 

“Drink some,” was the too bloody chirpy advice. “Really. Why do you all drink that much when you suck at it?”

 

He reached out, to push at Chansung’s face again. Chansung avoided it easily.

 

“Hyung,” he said. “You were sleeping on the floor. Are you and Taecyeon-hyung really breaking up?”

 

“We are not doing this right now.” Jay contemplated the water. Pressed the rim to his mouth. And then remembered. “You came into my room, you creepy fucker.”

 

“I didn’t. Taecyeon-hyung opened the door.”

 

Jay didn’t have the energy to be angry for long stretches of time. He mumbled around the rim, “Why are you so interested in my love life. Fuck off.”

 

Khun had, sometime in the night, climbed up from his spot pushing his face into Wooyoung’s thigh to resting his face way too close to Wooyoung’s crotch. When he snored, he breathed all over it. Wooyoung had only reacted like any normal, young, healthy male.

 

“Don’t you want to wake them up,” Jay said to Chansung. Who giggled through his teeth in that really dumb, girly way of his.

 

“If you wake them up,” said the overgrown brat. “I’ll fry eggs for breakfast.”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“It’s not that I don’t want to, hyung. It’s just that I live with one of them.”

 

The honorific didn’t grate so much, anymore. It was still awkward as hell, but – it was weird, Jay thought, squinting through the spots in his eyes, up at Chansung’s big-nosed face. He had a headache, and he wanted to throw up, but something _somewhere_ felt looser; damn him if he couldn’t have pinpointed where.

 

He could just imagine Simon D saying it was because he’d blubbered all his emotions out like a ballad singer.

 

The water was working. Maybe. At least it occurred to him that, “Wait. How did you know we were breaking up? Don’t answer that.” Tipping his head back, he downed the rest of the water. “Where is that idiot?”

 

Chansung still slouched when he was uneasy. “Uh. I don’t know. He went to shower, and I went to get the mop, so. Maybe he’s still there now?”

 

Jay noticed for the first time that his mop had been dug out of the closet that his housekeeper ahjumma guarded like a jealous dragon. Here were his options. Rescue Chansung from the ahjumma, or rescue his floor from Minjun’s vomit.

 

He turned. “Good going.”

 

“Hyung,” said Chansung. Jay tried not to freeze.

 

“Don’t, uh. Don’t break up if you don’t have to. I mean, it’d be so bloody awkward.”

 

They hadn’t been a fucking family. Jay knew that the fans liked to pretend that they were, seven boys stuck in a dorm together, stuck with each other twenty-four-seven, really, and after they made it big, no real opportunities to hang out with other people. Why else had it become such a drama, them splitting like they did?

 

Boy groups broke up all the time. Families broke all the time too, but that, people could sympathise with.

 

They hadn’t been a family, not to Jay. Just – maybe, they could have been.

 

Coming back over, he kicked Chansung in the leg. The junior cellphone tower doubled over, clutching his leg. Drama queen.

 

“First of all,” he said. “It’s not all about you. And second,” his voice was harsher than he had meant it to be, because, fuck, why would it be awkward unless. “Nobody breaks up unless they have to.”

 

Taecyeon was not in the bathroom. Jay knew this, because there was no water running or on-key, but shamefully strained renditions of SNSD songs filtering through the door, and because well. He could open the door and go in, couldn’t he?

 

The ice-cold water woke him up the rest of the way.

 

 

Taecyeon was in the garden. Jay was tugging a T-shirt, fresh from the wardrobe, over his head, when he happened to glance out the bedroom window. Saw what was unmistakeably a walking tree, kicking at the pebbles on the stone path.

 

The window was low enough for Jay to turn the handle, clamber out into the morning cold. Grass tickled his bare feet.

 

“Hey,” he said.

 

For somebody whose hangover had to be as bad as his own, and who was wearing a Pokémon shirt that had seen at least a decade of use, Taecyeon looked unfairly good. Jay wanted to tangle his fingers in that fresh, damp hair, and see how cool that skin would feel against his thumb.

 

“Your feet are dirty,” said Taecyeon. “Don’t you have a front door.” His joviality fell flat. He looked at the pebbles under his shoes. Worn out dance trainers. The lot of them must have come straight from practice.

 

A breeze whispered past Jay’s face. The flowers that the ahjumma watered for him once a day trembled dew onto the grass. “We don’t – ”

 

“I’m sorry – ” Taecyeon began.

 

They both shut up.

 

Jay didn’t bother to act the gentleman. “We don’t have to break up.”

 

There was a dulled edge to Taecyeon’s tone. An old, iron nail. “That’s a weird way to put it.”

 

“What’s weird about it? That’s what you’re doing, right? You’re breaking up with me, because you don’t think it’ll work out. Newsflash, most relationships don’t.”

 

Taecyeon didn’t get drawn easily into fights. He was always too damn sleepy. “I’m breaking up with you,” fucking even. “Because it’s not working out. Your passive aggressive shit is just – and it’s not like you like clingy, do you? And I’m clingy, Jay. It’s okay. You can say it. You don’t trust me, and I don’t trust you – ”

 

“I do trust you. What the fuck?”

 

Taecyeon’s mouth tightened, the way it always did before he was about to say something really girly. “Why wouldn’t you quit, about JB? Why were you so fucking interested in what I’d do? You think I’m the kind of person who throws people away, because I threw you away. Not the best foundation for a relationship.”

 

“Don’t,” he snapped. “Psychoanalyse me. You don’t know shit.”

 

Soil and grass curled with his feet. Above them, the sky was a heavy, wet blue. A square of it, within the high walls of Jay’s compound. Walls hadn’t stopped somebody from ruining Jay’s life way back when. Walls couldn’t fix this distance between them.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. At last. “Let’s just – sit. Okay.”

 

He thought that maybe Taecyeon would storm off. Leave him standing barefoot in his own garden. Only one of them had shoes, and maybe carkeys right now. It was what Jay would’ve done.

 

But the walking tree just parked himself down on the raised, stone edge of the pebbled path. And waited for Jay to do the same. They sat, legs stretched out awkwardly in front of them, and stared at the flowers along the wall.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

 

“Yeah,” said his idiot boyfriend. “I got that.” More diplomatically, “I shouldn’t have said what I said, either.”

 

Jay shoved him. Too sharply for it to have been a joke. “I meant, I’m sorry about what I said before you – left, you fucking idiot.”

 

Taecyeon rubbed his shoulder. “You didn't mean it?” The hope in his voice, so badly hidden, made Jay wince.

 

“No,” he said. They both deserved that. “I did.”

 

Taecyeon didn’t get angry easily. There were usually like a million signs before he even got close. The first being his tendency to fidget. Jay grabbed his wrist. “Don’t, that’s just fucking annoying, I was saying, I meant it, but maybe I was wrong, when I said it like – like.”

 

The thing was, he’d prepared this whole speech. Not consciously. Never consciously. Just a phrase here and there, when he was supposed to be composing, supposed to be eating, supposed to be in a drunken stupor. His imagination worked in snatches of sound, snapshots of things; in his imagination, the words just poured out.

 

“Chansung,” he tried again. “He said something to me earlier. He said, don’t break up if we don’t have to. And okay, maybe that sounds weird or something, but it made me think: maybe things don’t _have_ to be something.”

 

Taecyeon’s hand twisted in his, to close over his fingers, his grip was warm, and crushingly tight. He nodded, like he understood, when Jay didn’t have a fucking clue.

 

“The point is, maybe I was being too black-and-white about the whole thing. Nothing’s hard and fast, you know? Cars can get new engines, and all that shit.”

 

There. At least, he’d gotten the metaphor in. If Taecyeon said something stupid –

 

He kissed Jay on the cheek.

 

“What the _fuck_.”

 

He was doing that thing where his shoulders were shaking, his many teeth covered up by his giant hand. Screw that. Jay pulled his hand out of the way, and kissed him properly. Taecyeon’s laughter cut off, and he leaned into the kiss too, tongue licking along Jay’s lower lip.

 

It’d been two days since he’d gotten any.

 

“My eyes,” somebody moaned behind them. Junho. “Oh, my eyes.”


	10. Chapter 10

The news broke at two on a Wednesday afternoon.

 

Water lapped against the edge of the swimming pool, a calm, inexorable forwards motion that Jinyoung disturbed, his legs kicking listlessly in the water. He’d discarded his slacks on the tiled floor. The seat of his boxers was damp from the overflow of water from the pool, and he didn’t have a spare, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

 

The others were all in the kitchen. He could see their six multi-coloured heads through the open windows, crowded around Jaebum’s laptop. He should be in there with them, doing this with them, but he just needed some time. A little time.

 

Jinyoung had wanted to be strong. He’d wanted to be there for all of them. To be a steadying hand in a time when no one knew what to do, or where to go. So many people had been that same thing for him in his life; he’d wanted to return the favour.

 

He looked at his legs in the water. Strangely yellow and thin in the vast, luminous blue. Jaebum wasn’t wearing his slippers. His bare feet made no sound on the tiles. But even before he sighed, in that distinctive, breathy – not that Jaebum would ever admit to that – way of his, Jinyoung knew it was him. Who else?

 

“Yah. Are you seriously still mad?”

 

Jinyoung didn’t smile. He couldn’t.

 

The sound of a zipper. Shifting fabric. Water slapped, and then Jaebum was sitting next to him, legs sliding into the water. Jinyoung made himself look away. It wasn’t the time for this.

 

Behind them, Youngjae was making panicked sounds. If they hadn’t known better by now, Jinyoung would’ve thought he was having a heart attack.

 

“Hyung,” grated Yugyeom. “Stop it, I don’t want to panic. It’s not something to panic about, you aren’t helping. No one’s even said anything yet.”

 

“No one – no one, do you see how many comments there are – oh god, Mark-hyung.”

 

They’d talked about this, all of them, after Jackson had forcibly dragged him from what, as had been pointed out to him with little grace, was actually Jackson’s room.

 

It was too late to change it, now.

 

But Jinyoung, selfishly, needed Jaebum to be sure. Because, he wasn’t. He didn’t know if he would ever be. Jaebum had said he didn’t need to feel guilty. That, no matter what he’d said in the heat of the moment, this was his decision, and his alone. This just wasn’t the right time. GOT7 needed JB, and Jaebum wasn’t ready to give it all up. They were excuses. Poor ones. Even if they hadn’t been, Jinyoung could hear the forced conviction in Jaebum’s voice, like lace stretched to ripping point. Could see how he and Mark looked at each other, after. Private.

 

Nothing he or the others had said changed Jaebum’s mind, anyway. It was his decision. That was something they’d all agreed to abide by.  

 

Jinyoung wondered now, if maybe he should have worded it differently.

 

“You’re lying,” he said. To their feet refracted in the water. “You didn’t want to lie. Are you honestly okay with that?”

 

Jaebum’s hand on his shoulder was damp. Warm. “You have to stop repeating yourself.”

 

“In the future, if you come out – ”

 

“We can deal with that later.”

 

He breathed in. Out. So that he wouldn’t snap. “Takeshi – ”

 

“One problem at a time, Jinyoungie.”

 

The endearment shouldn’t affect him like this. It wasn’t like it was new, or forgotten. But Jinyoung felt wrung out, cried out. It wasn’t over. It was just beginning. And he hadn’t cried at all.

 

“Hyung, I don’t want you to do this for me.” he said.

 

Jaebum’s hand left his shoulder, slipped around him and pulled him in, knocking their heads together. When he spoke, his voice was a comfort. Familiar, steady. Repetitive. “One problem at a time.”

 

 

 

**Epilogue**

_“Why did you do it?” is a question they always ask. At twenty-seven years old, thirty-five, fifty-four, Mark’s answers change. They are painfully honest, they are uncomfortably bitter, they are thoughtful, and resigned. And yet, there is something, any die-hard fan of his could have told you, which remains the same._

_“Why did you do it?” they ask._

_Mark, fifty-four and a very different person from who he’d thought he’d be, looks into the camera, “I never felt that strongly about something, before this. Sure, I liked rapping, and dancing, and mucking about with GOT7. If I’d been able to do that for the rest of my life, I think I would’ve been pretty happy. But, this. Someone had to do it, you know. And when I thought, that person could be me – ”_

_He shakes his head. “But I think, the most important reason, the reason I could do it at all, was that I knew I wasn’t alone. I wanted other people to know that, too.”_

_He turns his head then, reflexively. As if in answer to a call no one else hears. In search of a person that is not there with him, on screen. When he looks back, he is still smiling._

 

 

 

_“Why did you do it?” is a question they always ask. At twenty-six years old, thirty-four, fifty-three, Jaebum’s answers change, because the questions change. Nonetheless, they are always curt, monotonous. If not for the caged look on his face, how halting the words are, people would suspect that he’d read them off a media packet._

_There are people who suspect, anyway._

_“Why did you do it?” they ask._

_At fifty-three, Jaebum taps his ringed fingers on his knee, nods at the question. And says, “Jinyoungie – ” the name locks in his mouth. His gaze shifts slightly off camera, uncertain that he is allowed to say it. “Jinyoungie doesn’t believe me when I say this, ever. But I don’t think I made the wrong decision, to wait to come out. People have said that it was a cowardly thing to do, and I’ve been slammed for lying about it at the time, when my own member – when Mark was brave enough to come out and deal with everything that came with that. I am sorry. For lying. And I think that Mark’s an admirable guy. One of the best guys I’ve ever met, and definitely the strongest._

_“But my coming out – it wouldn’t have just been me I was putting at risk. There was so much speculation – I was okay with who I was, then. Mark was okay with it, and Luhan-hyung, although I didn’t know about him at the time. Jinyoung wasn’t. It wouldn’t have been right to force him to deal with something like that, when he wasn’t ready.”_

_Something just out of sight makes him smile. Edged._

_“Jinyoungie – he talks about this guy a lot. Mark Tuai – Tuainu – Twain. A writer. Mark Twain once said – something about – ”_

_His gaze shifts again. This time, he seems to be listening carefully. He mumbles a little to himself, brow knitting in concentration. But, when he looks back at the camera, the words slip with relative ease off his tongue. “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes._

_“I guess,” he says. “What I’m trying to say is: even though we all get there eventually, some things take time. Rumours can start at any time. Anybody can start a rumour. But actually admitting to something, accepting it as a fact, is hard. And we, well. Back then, we were still putting our shoes on.”_

_He bows then, properly, hands together before him. “Thank you. I hope you will support us from here on, too.”_

_“Why did you do it, in the end?” is the question they come to ask. At fifty-three years old, Jinyoung looks into the camera, and smiles. Only smiles._

_There is a sketchbook in his lap. Someones lobs a marker at him, which by some miracle, he manages to catch. Immediately, he raises it over his head, the beginning of a curse rounding his mouth. And then he remembers the camera, and collects himself. Begins to write. The cap closes over the nib again, with a decisive click._

_He raises the book. The camera zooms in on it._

_It says, ‘Because:_

_‘Life is like the wind. What is there to agonise over? Meetings are happy, partings are sad, and everything is just a moment.’_

_– Kim Ji Hoo, aged twenty-three, in October 2008._

 

 

 

 


End file.
